LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf __._S.2*_-" 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



FIRST STEPS 



IN 



PHILOSOPHY 



(Physical and Ethical) 



/ 

By WILLIAM MACKINTIRE SALTER 

AUTHOR OF "ethical RELIGION" 



nyjy^ 



CHICAGO 
CHARLES H. KERR ANt) COMPANY 



1892 



V 



.c> 



^t:- 




Copyright, l8g2 by Charles H. Kerr. 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

JOHN PARKER, Jr., 

FROM WHOM AS THE FOUNDER OF 

THE PARKER FELLOWSHIPS 

IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DISINTERESTED STUDY 

ONCE CAME TO ME, 

THESE TARDY FIRST-FRUITS OF MY 

PHILOSOPHICAL THINKING ARE 

IN HONOR AND GRATITUDE 

DEDICATED. 



PREFACE 

Philosophy, whatever else it may mean, in- 
volves the clarification of our fundamental con- 
ceptions. We naturally aspire to a complete 
view of the world, a theory of the universe. But 
we have first to clear up our minds as to certain 
elementary notions. We are using almost every 
day such terms, for instance, as matter and duty 
— what do we mean by them? Can the thoughts 
we chance to have about them stand the test of 
analysis and criticism? Are they clear and self- 
consistenl? We cannot successfully build a house 
till we have tested the soundness and strength 
of our materials. As little can we construct a 
philosophical system, till we have tested the ele- 
mentary ideas that are to enter into it and help 
constitute it. It is idle to try to develop a the- 
istic, monistic, materialistic or any other theory 
of the universe, till we have searchingly asked 
ourselves these preliminary questions. 

The present book conducts an examination 
into two fundamental conceptions — viz., Matter 
and Duty. It is no more than an introduction 



b PREFACE 

to philosophy proper, and a partial introduction 
at that. Yet the author has tried to do in a thor- 
ough-going and scientific way the special work 
he has attempted, and hopes that his little book 
may be of service to those who, like himself, are 
feeling their way to an intelligible and satisfac- 
tory view of the world. The book is in any case 
the result of his own striving, and the tentative, 
experimental method of treatment that prevails 
in it perhaps reveals only too plainly that the 
author did not have his conclusions at the begin- 
ning of his investigations, but reached them at 
the end. Moreover, he does not conceal from 
his readers and is perfectly willing to confess 
that he has not as yet a philosophy proper, that 
a true theory of the universe is as much a prob- 
lem to him as matter and duty once were. But he 
hopes, if time and fortune favor, to take further 
steps than he has already taken — yes, the last 
steps, and to have and present some day at 
least the outlines of a consistent philosophical 
system. Meanwhile, he will be thankful for any 
criticism of the work already done. 

The substance of the first part of the book ap- 
peared in the Jouriial of Speculative Philosophy, 
1884; that of the second part was given at the 
Plymouth School of Applied Ethics, 1891. 

W. M. S. 

Philadelphia, May, 1892. 



CONTENTS 



PART I— PHYSICAL- 
PAGE 

I. — What do we mean by Matter? — An Analysis, g 

II. — Difficulties in Realizing the Idealistic View, 28 

III. — Reconciliation with "Common-Sense," . . 39 

IV. — Summary of Conclusions, .... 66 

PART II— ETHICAL— 

I. — What do we mean by Duty? — The Elements of 

the Idea, . . . . . . . 72 

II. — The Rational Basis of the Idea of Duty, . gi 

III. — The Realization of the Nature of Each Being 

as the End to be Striven for, . . . loi 

IV. — Other Theories of Duty — Intuitionism, . 127 

V. — Utilitarianism, . . . . . . 137 

VI. — Concluding Remarks, ..... 149 

Index of Authors Quoted or Referred to, , . 156 

7 



FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 



PART 1. PHYSICAL 



CHAPTER I 

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY MATTER? — AN ANALYSIS 

Let US imagine ourselves gathering roses in 
a garden. The bushes are thorny and in pick- 
ing one of the roses our fingers are pricked. 
We have a sensation, which though it be mo- 
mentary, is distinct and real ; we call it pain. 
The pain we hardly think of attributing to the 
thorns, though it comes from them; as our 
sensation we know it can only exist in our- 
selves. We call it then (if we wish to be ex- 
act) a subjective reality. 

Suppose now that we bring the roses near 
our face. We are met with a new sensation 
and an agreeable one : We smell their per- 
fume. How does the perfume exist? Is it a 

9 



lO FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

something outside of us or is it an experience 
within? Does it inhere in the rose or in us? 
Let us attend and question ourselves. I con- 
fess that I have done so time and again, and 
the more I have done so, the surer I am that 
the perfume is my own feeling or sensation or 
experience just as truly as the pain is. The 
pain is given us by an external object, but it 
does not inhere in the object j and the perfume 
is caused by the roses, but it does not belong 
to them. Professor Huxley even says in speak- 
ing of the odor of the musk-plant, "that it is 
as absurd to suppose that muskiness is a qual- 
ity inherent in one plant as it would be to imag- 
ine that pain is a quality inherent in another, 
because we feel pain when a thorn pricks the 
finger."* This is a strong language, though it 
is possible to become so distinctly conscious 
that odors are our sensations or feelings as to 
have no hesitancy in subscribing to it. 

Modern physiology, however, comes to the 
support of such a view. It not only teaches 
that the odor does not exist outside of us, but 
attempts to show how it arises within us. It 
tells us of our nostrils, and describes the deli- 
cate membrane with which they are lined and 
the infinitesimal nerve-fibres which connect 
the membrane with the brain. It teaches 

'^ Science and Qulture, p. 259 






WHAT IS MATTER? IT 

that minute particles, being thrown off from 
the odorous substance, touch this membrane, 
that vibrations are thereby produced, which by 
means of the nerve-fibres are communicated to 
the brain, and that the sensation of smell is 
ordinarily the result of the action of all these 
instrumentalities. The odor does not, strictly 
speaking, belong to our nostrils (or to any part 
of the olfactory apparatus) any more than to the 
external object, but first comes to be in our 
mind. A sensation of odor may even arise 
without the presence of an external object. If 
the appropriate changes take place in the nerve 
fibres and are communicated to the brain, the 
odor results as truly as if some external object 
were the cause of it. In such a case, we should 
be mistaken not in saying that the odor exists, 
but only in supposing that it came from with- 
out. For the localizing of the odor is an act 
of the mind; the same is true of localizing 
pain. The pain,of which I have already spoken, 
is^not in our fingers, but we place it there. So 
the perfume is not in the rose, or even in our 
nostrils; we place it here or there according to 
our own notions.* Of themselves neither odor 



*These notions have always a practical import. They 
indicate the sources from which we may expect the sensa- 
tions to come to us or by attending to which we may cause 
the sensations to cease. That the pain is in the finger 
means that it is the finger we must attend to, if we wish to 



12 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

nor pain have any position ; and indeed it is 
doubtful if we should have any notion of space 
at all, if we had only such sensations. But 
we may assign them their places so many times 
that the act of localizing becomes at last almost 
instantaneous and unconscious, i.e. mechanical. 
In a similar way we may come to realize 
that bitter and sweet and all kinds of tastes are 
sensations, which though given us by external 
objects are not, strictly speaking, the properties 
ofc these objects,but their effects upon ourselves. 
So of heat and cold ; it takes very little effort 
to realize that these are our own feelings, since 
we experience them so vividly at times — feel- 
ings, which though linked with various objects, 
are not intrinsic qualities of them. It is true 
that according to the teaching of physics, heat 
is a mode of motion; but when this statement 
is carefully analyzed, we see that it means not 
that heat is motion, but that when motion is 
communicated to our organism it becomes hea» 
— heat being, strictly speaking, unmeaning 
save for a sentient being. 

stop the pain. Helmholtz says: "I hold that to speak of 
our ideas of things as having any other than a practical va- 
lidity is absolutely meaningless. They can be nothing but 
symbols, natural signs, which we learn to use for the regu- 
lation of our movements and actions. When we have learned 
to read these symbols aright, we are able with their aid to 
direct our actions so that they shall have the desired re- 
sults; that is, that the expected new sensation shall arise," 
(Fhysiologische Optik^ p. 443). 



WHAT IS MATTER? 1 3 

That sound may similarly be a sensation 
within us rather than a reality without, is pro- 
bably harder for most of us to realize. The 
thunder rolls all the same, we naturally believe, 
whether we hear it or not. Yet physics teaches 
us — and most educated persons are trying to 
accustom themselves to think— that the only 
external things (in this connection) are the air 
and its vibrations, and that these when coming 
into contact with the ear, produce sound, but 
are themselves soundless. On occasion of a 
report of a neighboring cannon, we may be 
clearly conscious of the vibrations as such (that 
is, as distinct from the sound); the house in 
which we are — or, if we are standing in the 
open air, the ground — may shake with them ; 
and after such an experience it cannot be diffi- 
cult to distinguish between the vibrations and 
the sound, and to entertain the idea that the 
sound is only an effect upon ourselves. A per- 
son who is deaf may be aware of the vibrations 
and yet mentally realize that owing to certain 
organic defects he cannot experience the effects 
which would otherwise come to him. 

Color seems, doubtless, like a still more in- 
violable possession of the outer world. Phy- 
sics, however, treats it as it does sound. The 
waves of the supposed ethereal medium are, ac- 
cording to its teaching, the real objective coun- 



14 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

terparts of color, and color itself is a sensation 
which we transfer to the particular object from 
which the wave motions are supposed to be 
reflected. We may, of course, speak of color 
and light (as we do of sound and heat), as ex- 
isting outside of us in this or that portion of 
space; and there is no harm in our doing so, 
so long as we do not assume that our language 
is accurate and scientific. But we can only 
say with scientific accuracy that color and light 
are our sensations, produced indeed ordinarily 
(so far as we have a right to speak at present) 
by a combination of physical and physiological 
causes, but not themselves inhering in the 
external world. Physiology tells us of an op- 
tical apparatus, similar in the essential manner 
of its construction to the olfactory apparatus 
already described. Each mode of sensation is 
in fact similarly provided for; and color, being 
the result of the action of the entire apparatus, 
is no more in the retina or the nerve or the 
brain than in the object itself. It arises on 
the completion of these mechanical processes 
in a manner that physiology confesses to be 
beyond its power of comprehension. And col- 
ors may arise without the action of external 
objects, if but the appropriate changes take 
place in the optical apparatus. Some of us 
may have had the unfortunate experience 



WHAT is MATTER? I5 

known as "seeing stars," and yet this imaginary 
light (as we term it) was as truly and really 
light as that of the "actual" stars in heaven. 
We should have been mistaken only in sup- 
posing that the "imaginary" light came from 
heaven — that is, in localizing the sensation — 
not in recognizing its existence. The localiz- 
ing is a matter of the judgment. Even if we say 
that color and light must exist somewhere (that 
is, that they necessarily imply the idea of space), 
their determinate place is not their own property, 
but is given them by the mind — though of this 
mental act we may cease to be conscious. Col- 
or-blindness, it should be added, does not mean 
that the color-blind individual sees what does 
not exist, but simply that in certain circum- 
stances his sensations are not like those of 
others who make the majority. The practical 
uses of life lead us to call him mistaken ; but 
if, the essential facts remaining just the same, 
the majority shifted to his side, the rest of us 
who now think that we see correctly would 
have to allow ourselves "mistaken" — ze/^ should 
be the color-blind individuals. In itself the 
light of a switch-lantern is neither green nor 
red; what it is in itself no one knows, if, in- 
deed, such a question has any meaning ; but 
green or red are names for its effects on indi- 
viduals, which may differ as individuals differ. 



1 6 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

But the notion most difficult of all to realize, 
or even, perhaps, to seriously entertain, is that 
hardness and pressure are our sensations rather 
than qualities of bodies in themselves. Is not 
the ground hard, we ask, when we stamp upon 
it, and the dictionary heavy when we try to 
lift it? Why if solidity was but a sensation 
of his, could not the forlorn Hamlet have caused 
his "too, too solid flesh" to melt? But the 
question is, what is meant hy hardness, pres- 
sure and solidity? Color is not robbed of ex- 
istence any more than pain, because its manner 
of existence is found to be subjective ; nor can 
we change color or pain at will, simply because 
they are sensations. That hardness and pres- 
sure and solidity really exist is beyond dispute ; 
but what are we to understand by real existence 
in this case? The only answer I can make is 
that they are real experiences, that when we 
stamp upon the ground we have an unmistak- 
able feeling of hardness and when we lift the 
dictionary a distinct sensation of weight or 
pressure. The solidity of Hamlet's flesh meant 
that he could touch one part of his body with 
another and experience their mutual resistance. 

It is only stating all this with a little more 
exactness to say that hardness, pressure and 
solidity are sensations in us produced by objects 
outside us. In fact, if we did not have such 



WHAT IS MATTER? I? 

sensations, it would mean little to say that the 
objects were hard or heavy or solid. If the 
ground did not give me distinctly a sensation 
of hardness when I struck it, it would not only 
cease to be hard, it would cease to be the 
ground in any intelligible sense.* Illustrations 
might be multiplied to show that the hardness 
and resistance of bodies mean their capacity to 
prpduce such sensations in us — an|i yet I do 
not doubt that some readers may have to reflect 
over the matter for some time before t^ey can 
agree with me. Proof, in the ordinary sense 
of the word, is perhaps impossible wh^re all 
turns on a clear understanding of our o^n ex- 
perience. The idealist (for this, in a limited 
sense, is what I suppose I must begin to call 
myself) can only say, This is my experience 
and if I cannot lead yoa.by your own reflec- 
tion to a similar understanding of your own, I 



* It may be asked, When a ball falls upon the ground, 
does it not experience the hardness of the latter, and so may 
not hardness exist independently of ourselves? I answer, 
Yes, certainly, if we suppose the ball is a sentient thing. 
But if we are not justified in attributing sentiency to the 
ball, then to speak of it as experiencing the hardness of the 
ground is a bit of anthropomorphism. All we can say with 
scientific accuracy, is that we should experience resistance, 
if we were in the ball's place. Our actual knowledge does 
not go beyond the fact that the downward motion of the 
ball ceases (or, if we wish to go into details, that its mass- / 
motion is converted, in part, into a motion of its molecules,/ 
which again is convertible into heat). 



1 8 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

will at least spare you "arguments and proofs'* 
which can be to little purpose. 

One further illustration I may, however, make 
use of. What do we mean by distinguishing 
between a ghost (or phantom) and a real body? 
A phantom may sometimes have a distinct 
shape and features, and even, as in the case of 
Protesilaus in Wordsworth's noble poem. La- 
odamia, "roseate lips. " And how do we know it 
to be a phantom — as how did Laodamia know 
her hero to be after all but a vain shadow — 
save by essaying to clasp it and finding that it 
eludes our grasp, that instead of real and un- 
mistakable sensations of resistance, it gives us 
none at all.* 

Hence the poet calls Protesilaus an "unsub- 
stantialf form." A thing that resists us is zp- 



* " Forth sprang the impassioned Queen her Lord to clasp; 

Again that consummation she essayed; 
But unsubstantial form eludes her grasp 

As often as that eager grasp was made. 
The Phantom parts — but parts to reunite 
And re-assume his place before her sight.** 

Of a similar tenor is the account of the interview between 
Ulysses and his mother's shade in the Odyssey: "So spake 
she and I mused in my heart and would fain have embraced 
the spirit of my mother dead. Thrice I sprang toward her; 
thrice she flitted from my hands as a shadow or even as a 
dreafu, and grief waxed ever sharper at my heart." (Butch- 
er and Lang's Translation, xi, 205, ff.) 

f Substance has this primary sensible meaning, namely, 
that an object is not a mere empty form or shadow, but one 
that resists us when we take hold of it or attempt to pass 
through it. Philosophers who make an ambitious use of 



WHAT IS MATTER? I9 

SO facto real.* Even things that we cannot see, 
or smell or taste or have an}' sensible experi- 
ence of whatever,save of this single kind,namely, 
that they can resist us, we know thereby to 
exist — for example, the air. Yet what is resist- 
ance but a sensation? If so, the bottom ele- 
ment in our notion of reality itself (so far as 
material things are concerned) is a sensible 
experience rather than something external to 
us and separable from us.f 

the term Vv^ould do well to recall now and then its original 
significance. From what is demonstrable it has come, as 
often used, to signify just what is indemonstrable. Her- 
bert Spencer well remarks that "we cannot think of sub- 
stance save in terms that imply material properties." (Priu' 
ciples of Psychology, § 63). Contrast John Henry Newman, 
who endeavors to rehabilitate the Catholic doctrine of trans- 
substantiation by saying that the change in the consecrated 
elements is not with the phenomena, which remain the 
same, but with "what no one on earth knows anything 
about, the material substances themselves." {Apologia p7'o 
Vita Sua, Part vii.) 

*This was evidently the test which Macbeth had in mind, 
when he asked, 

"Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 
To feeling diS to sight? Or art thou but 
A dagger of the mind, a false creation, 
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?" 

(Act II. Sc. I.) 

•|;Compare the language of Spencer: all our 

experiences of things are ultimately resolvable into either 
resistances or the signs of resistances." (Psychology, § 348.) 
Again, "Our conception of matter, reduced to its simplest 
shape, is that of coexistent positions that offer resistance; 
as contrasted with our conception of space in which the co- 
exisieni positions offer no resistance, " (^/r J"/ Principles^ § 
48 — the italics are my own.) 



20 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

A word should be added here as to the dis- 
tinction often made between the "primary" and 
"secondary" qualities of matter. Many have 
admitted that the latter (such as taste, sound 
and color) are subjective, while stoutly hold- 
ing that the former (such as hardness and re- 
sistance) reside in the objects themselves. A 
thorough-going analysis shows, however, that 
this sort of difference does not exist.* 

And yet there is a difference. In the first 
place, resistance is a universal and unchanging 
quality of bodies — even the molecules and atoms 
being supposed to have it, however inappre- 
ciably to our present senses ; while color and 
other so-called secondary qualities may change 
before our very eyes. A body without color 
may possibly be conceived; but one that gave 
no resistance, (and that would give none, even 
if our power of noting resistance were in- 



*So Professor William James: "To the naive con- 
sciousness all these attributes [color, taste, smell, as well as 
hardness and pressure] are equally objective. To the crit- 
ical, 3\\ are equally subjective.*' {T/ie J^ee/zno- of £J^or^, Bos- 
ton, 1880, p. 29.) Professor Huxley develops a similar 
view in his chapter on "Descartes' 'Discourse,' " {Lay Se7'- 
mons, p. 320 ff.) and in another chapter on "Bishop Berke- 
ley on the Metaphysics of Sensation." {Critiques and Ad- 
dresses ^ p. 287, If.) Spencer says: "Thus we are brought 
to the conclusion that what we are conscious of as properties 
of matter even down to its weight and resistaiice are but sub- 
jective affections produced by objective agencies that are un- 
known and unknowable." {Psychology^ § 86 — italics are 
mine.) 



WHAT IS MATTER? 21 

creased ad infinitum^ would cease to be a body 
in any intelligible sense of that term. All the 
same, sensations by being permanently and 
universally possible do not lose their character 
as sensations and become separate realities. 
Again, the sensations of resistance and pres- 
sure are of more practical importance for us to 
note than any other. For if we experience 
them in too emphatic a manner, we may lose 
(temporarily or for good) the power of further 
sensation; while odors, sounds, and colors rarely 
bring after them so serious a consequence. It 
is rational then to give a higher rank to resist- 
ances than to other kinds of sensation; and 
the latter acquire serious import chiefly when 
from past association we are led to suspect that 
resistances will follow after them — as when, 
for example, in the mountains we are startled 
with a rumbling and crackling noise and know 
that an avalanche may be coming. It would 
be interesting to inquire how far motives of 
practical convenience or necessity enter into 
the formation of distinctions and conceptions 
in common use ; yet the interest would be 
chiefly psychological, since distinctions and 
conceptions so arising could hardly be regarded 
as having final or philosophical validity. 

What then is left of the external world as 
the result of the foregoing analysis? Appar- 



22 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

ently very little. The common sense of men 
regards the fragrance of the flower as external 
in the same sense that its color and substance 
are; but our ungracious analysis has stripped 
the flower not only of its fragrance, but of 
every sensible quality it possesses. What is 
left, then? Is it the form or shape? Now the 
form is not indeed a sensation; it is rather the 
boundary or limit of sensations (such as color 
or resistance), marked out or discerned by the 
intellect. But what is a limit, when that 
which is limited is taken away? If a form 
changes, when its content changes — for exam- 
ple, in the case of shifting clouds — does it not 
cease to be when the content ceases to be — as 
when the clouds vanish and leave a clear sky? 
Now in the idealist's view, the material of the 
world does not indeed cease to be, but its man- 
ner of existence is found to be subjective. How 
then can the form be objective? Common 
sense says that a form which has no content is 
not a real form, but an idea of the mind. A 
similar line of remark applies to the changes 
and motions of bodies. If the objects are them- 
selves resolvable into groups of sensations, their 
changes and movements must have equally to 
do with sensible experiences. Separated from 
the objects of which they are predicable, what 



WHAT IS MATTER? 23 

are changes and movements but abstractions of 
the mind?* 

But have we not the molecules and atoms, 
out of which the sensible world is supposed to 
be composed, to fall back upon as an obje^ct- 
ive residuum ?t So far as I can learn, how- 
ever, molecules and atoms are supposed to 
have the primary qualities of matter, resistance 
and extension, though destitute of the secondary 
ones. And even if the conception of the atom 
as a point without extension is the true one, it 
is none the less thought of as a centre of force 
or resistance ; and if resistance is subjective 
there is the same difficulty in conceiving of the 
point as objective that we have experienced in 
thinking of an empty form. Indeed, whatever 
the theory of molecules and atoms, they can 
hardly be regarded as the source whence the 
sensible (phenomenal) world proceeds, but 
rather as the sensible world itself stated in the 
simplest possible terms. | They would be dis- 



* Huxley says: "All that we know about motion is that it 
is a name for certain changes in the relation of our visual, 
tactile, and muscular sensations." (Science and Culture^ p. 
257) 

f So apparently Democritus thought: "Sweet and bitter, 
hot, cold, color are by convention; only atoms and void are 
real." (Quoted in Sextus Empiricus Adv. Math., vii, 135.) 

X Lange regards the atoms as phenomenal, their only dif- 
ference from ordinary sensations consisting in the fact that 
the latter are immediately given to us, while atoms are 



24 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

covered, if ever they could be, not in answer 
to efforts to find the real and objective causes 
of our sensations, but by successively dividing 
and re-dividing the contents of the sensations 
themselves, and reaching at last their irreduci- 
ble elements. 

Is there, then, absolutely nothing real and 
objective left? So far as sensible phenomena 
are concerned, v^e must answer, No, absolutely 
nothing is left; the whole sensible (material) 
world is but an effect upon ourselves. >\But 
because nothing sensible or material is left, it 

something "vermittelte und gedachte." {Geschichte des Ma- 
terialismus, Vol. II, p. 165.) Btichner even calls the modern 
doctrine of atoms an "Entdeckung der Naturforschung, " in 
contrast with the ancient doctrine which he speaks of as a 
"willkiirlich speculative Vorstellung" (quoted by Lange, II, 
181). Sir William Thompson's assertion that molecules are 
pieces of matter of measurable dimensions with shape, mo- 
tion and laws of motion, intelligible subjects of scientific in- 
vestigation, (quoted by J. P. Cooke in Science for All, Vol. 
V, p. 293) brings them clearly within the realm of sensible 
experience and shows, if true, that they are as much sub- 
jective as the color, shape and motion of a cloud are. Hux- 
ley regards molecules and atoms rather as a useful hypoth- 
esis, "a means of picturing to ourselves the order of nature" 
{Introductory Science Primer, §§ 48, 49 — the italics are mine) 
than as objects of experimental study — the hypothesis being 
one, it need scarcely be added, not as to the causes of the 
world of our sensations, but as to the elements of which it is 
composed. Molecules and atoms belong after all (accord- 
ing to any conception of them I have ever seen) to the same 
order of existence with the more familiar objects of our ex- 
perience; they are not properly speaking, explanations of 
sensation, but, as Professor G. von Gizycki says of atoms 
in giving an account of A. Riehl's Der Philosophische Kriti- 
cismus, "abstractions derived from the facts of sensation." 



WHAT IS MATTER? 25 

would be a hasty inference to say that nothing 
whatever is left. If we are asked, What?- — we 
answer, All that causes sensations. We have 
allowed and posited a cause for each species 
of sensation we have considered, and the only 
trouble has been that each conception of the 
cause, provisionally allowed, has turned out, 
on examination to be itself an effect — that is,a 
sensation in us. We have, for example, re- 
garded odor and other secondary qualities as 
coming from an extended body external to our- 
selves ; but on turning our attention to the 
extended body, we found that the element which 
makes it a body, viz., its resistance, is as much 
a sensation as odor is. Apart from the resis- 
tance, there is but the empty extension or 
form, and this can hardly be called a cause, if 
indeed it can be said to be^ in any real and 
objective sense. Our search for causes thus 
proved unsuccessful. But though we know of 
no causes, we have an inextinguishable faith 
that there are such causes — there being in fact 
no particular thing we are more sure of than 
that for every event (and every sensible phe- 
nomenon is an event, viz., in ourselves) there 
is some kind of explanation or cause. It only 
remains to us then, in the absence of knowl- 
edge, to think, conjecture or speculate — by 
which I mean to form some kind of hypothesis 



26 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

which we cannot hope to (in the strict sense of 
the word) verify. An hypothesis as to the 
nature and order of sensible phanomena need 
not remain an hypothesis, since we can exper- 
ience the phenomena with which it has to do and 
test tha hypothesis by its conformity, or lack of 
Conformity, to the same. But we do not seem 
to be able to find the causes of these phenom- 
ena, and so, though one opinion may look more 
probable than another and may be even be 
practically adopted and acted upon, it cannot 
in the present state of things take the rank of 
scientific knowledge. To recount the opinions 
of men on this subject would be to write the 
history of metaphysics; and to examine them, 
with the aim of fixing upon some one as an 
opinion for ourselves, would be venturing on 
a solution of the metaphysical problem. The 
theist has one solution and the speculative 
materialist* another. The agnostic,in the Kan- 

*It may be a question whether there ever has been such 
a materialist. For ordinary materialism does not hold to 
some supersensible matter and motion as the explan- 
ation of things, but to matter and motion as we know them 
and are in contact with them, though, it may be, reduced to 
their simplest terms, e. g., molecules and atoms. If the 
analysis given above is correct, ordinary materialism is sim- 
ply mental confusion. Huxley, however, suggests a genu- 
ine speculative materialism (see his Hume, p. 79) whether 
involving self-contradictions or not, I do not undertake to 
say. He also suggests an opposite view — viz., that the world 
as we know it "may have no more resemblance to its cause 
than one of Bach's fugues has to the persoB who is playing 
it." (^Lay Sermons, p. 329.) 



WHAT IS MATTER? 27 

tian and Spencerian sense, is content with ac- 
knowledging the problem and asserting it to 
be beyond human pov/er of solution. But it is 
no part of our present purpose to discuss these 
varying views. To do so would be to take the 
last steps in philosophy rather than the first. 
I wish in what follows simply to become more 
at home — and to make my readers more at home 
— in the position* respecting sensible phe- 
nomena which has already been reached. 

*This position might be called Sensible or Physical Ideal- 
ism and is nowise inconsistent with, but rather implies a 
Supersensible or Metaphysical Realism. And such a union 
of idealism and realism is the view of Spencer, as it was that 
of Kant. Absolute Idealism, as I understand it, takes a step 
further and involves the causes of sensible phenomena in the 
same subjective relationships (whether in a human or abso- 
lute mind) in which we have found sensible phenomena 
themselves to be involved. This statement of absolute ideal- 
ism is made, however, under correction. 



CHAPTER II 

DIFFICULTIES IN REALIZING THE IDEALISTIC VIEW 

The first difficulty that I shall try to meet 
may seem to be a very radical one. For if we 
are consistent must we not acknowledge our 
own body to be but a tissue of sensations like 
any external objects? Hence the various organs 
of sense, the nose, ear, eye, etc., the nerves 
connecting them within the brain and the brain 
itself, come to be groups of sensations, exist- 
ing only in our or some one's mind. Consist- 
ency surely does demand this. For though 
our attention was directed at first to the exter- 
nal world, the same line of thought, a little 
more closely followed, manifestly conducts to 
the same conclusions respecting the nature of 
our own body. If the yellow of a pair of gloves 
I am wearing is my sensation, surely the sim- 
ple flesh color of my hands is equally my sens- 
ation. If the sound of the piano does not 
strictly inhere in the piano, but in myself, the 

same must be said of the sound of my own 

28 



DIFFICULTIES WITH IDEALISM 29 

voice, viz. J that it is not properly in my vocal 
organs but in my mind. If the weight of the 
dictionary is really a sensation I experience, 
equally so is the weight of my own arm when 
I hold it at right angles from my body. The 
hardness and resistance of my skull or of any 
bone in my body are sensations just as much 
as the hardness and resistance of the table at 
which I am sitting, or of the floor under my 
feet. There is no reason why we should except 
the sensible qualities of the nose, eye or ear or 
of the nerves connecting them with the brain 
or of the brain itself. The gray color of the 
matter of the brain can no more have existence 
outside some one's mind than any other color. 
The weight, texture and outlines of the nerves 
are matters of sensation as much as those of 
the blades of grass out in the field. And of 
themselves and out of relation to the mind 
both are equally mysterious; so considered, 
they are no longer nerves or blades of grass, 
but simply the unknown causes of these groups 
of sensible phenomena in us. 

But in so saying, does not the idealist, it 
may be asked, cut the ground from under his 
own feet, since in the previous analysis he has 
after the manner of ordinary physiological teach- 
ing treated the various organs of sense, the 
nerves and brain as the very means by which 



30 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

we get sensations? The question is fair and 
must be fairly met, and the idealist has a 
chance of only two alternatives : either to 'deny 
that we have any real sensations, the super- 
structure disappearing, as every superstructure 
must, with its ground-work ; or to allow that 
the organs of sense, nerves and brain are not, 
in the strict sense of the words, such a means 
and ground-work, that the real origin of sen- 
sations is not merely partially but totally in- 
explicable, and that all explanatory language 
such as has been used is but provisional and 
when assuming to give an anywise strict and 
scientific account of the matter must be repro- 
bated. 

It is not possible to deny with any sober- 
ness that we have sensations, and so the latter 
alternative must be taken. The organs of sense 
and the nervous system cannot in any strict- 
ness be said to produce sensations, because they 
only exist* as sensations. The mind cannot 
be really dependent on the bodily organization, 
because the bodily organization is only a group 
of phenomena in and to the mind. All sensi- 
ble phenomena, things as near as the beating 
of our own hearts and things as far as the shin- 

* Only exist, that is, save in their supersensible or trans- 
cendental causes. This qualification I must ask my readers 
to bear in mind, for it would be wearisome to be continu- 
ally repeating it. 



DIFFICULTIES WITH IDEALISM 3! 

ing of the stars and the sweep of systems, are 
equally phenomena to us and in us and have 
no meaning (save in their hidden ground) apart 
from us. However venturesome the expression 
may seem, idealism demands that we say that 
instead of the world's containing us, we contain 
the world; that however much meaning "out- 
side" may have relatively to our body, it has 
none to the mind of man. 

The idealist is aware that this seems to in- 
volve an altogether mysterious, if not unthink- 
able, notion of the mind. Ordinarily the mind 
is regarded as existing within the bodily organ- 
ism and more particularly in the brain. Ac- 
cording to idealism, however, the brain as well 
as body exist in the mind. What in the name 
of common sense, it may be asked, then, is this 
mind and where is it? Let me say by way of 
answer in the first place, that the assertion of 
the literal existence of the mind in the body 
or brain is destitute of all experimental support. 
We do not find the mind, however diligently 
and minutely we may examine the body or the 
nervous system. The supposed existence of 
the brain and. all that physiology may tell us 
of the structure of the nervous system, may be 
verified; but no one has ever found a sensation 
or a thought in the brain or has the slightest 



32 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

ground for hope that he ever will.* If one 
will only believe in that of which he has experi- 
mental proof, he may reasonably doubt whether 
there is any thought or sensation besides his 
own. The idealist, however, will tell us that 
we are altogether off the track in expecting to 
find the mind in this way. What the signifi- 
cance of the ordinary view, that the mind is 
connected with the brain, is, will be considered 
later on.f It suffices now to say that the idealist 
does not admit that the mind is />^,or any wise 
spatially connected with, the brain. And now 
to answer the question. What is the mind? I 
would say, It is that which experiences sensa- 
tions and thoughts, or, more simpl}^, that which 
feels and thinks. And to the other question. 
Where is the mind? I would reply not that 
the question is unanswerable (as one might 
say of an inquiry in itself legitimate, the data 
for answering which were, however, not forth- 
coming), nor yet that the mind is nowhere, but 
that the question has, to speak accurately, no 

*W. K. Clifford says, "But however powerful a micro- 
scope you used and however carefully you looked, it would 
be of no use to expect to see the man thinking. You would 
see nothing more than the merely mechanical actions that 
we have described hitherto, and if you expected by the use 
of such a powerful microscope to see anything like thought 
or sensation or emotion or will, you would be grievously 
disappointed." {^Seeing and Thinking, p, 79.) 

\ cf. p. 45. 



DIFFICULTIES WITH IDEALISM 33 

meaning, or about as much meaning as a ques- 
tion would have as to the color of a certain 
pleasure or as to the weight avoirdupois of 
a pang of regret. The conception of the mind 
which idealism necessitates is only mysterious 
as we try to range the mind along with the 
sensible phenomena of which it takes cogniz- 
ance, forgetting that it is not one of them, 
but that to which they exist — that is, as we by 
careless and inaccurate thinking make the mys- 
teriousness. 

But if the mind remains an intelligible some= 
thing, the idealist's conception of the world 
at least, it may be said, makes it illusory; if 
he saves the existence of the mind, he does so at 
the expense of all the objects to which the 
mind can direct itself. Now the present writer 
cannot answer for all the theories that have 
passed current as idealism. Some have been, 
perhaps, hastily conceived, and are not so much 
interpretations of experience as departures from 
it and attempted flights in the air. The Ideal- 
ism I am stating, however — and but for an air 
of presumption about such a title, I should call 
it Scientific"^ Idealism — is simply the out- 

* W. K. Clifford even says that the "doctrine of Berke- 
ley's has now been so far confirmed by the physiology of the 
senses that it is no longer a metaphysical speculation, but a 
scientifically established fact." {Lectures and Essays ^ II, 
142.) 
3 



34 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

come of an analysis of what experience is. The 
very head and front of its offending, to the mind 
of the ordinary realist, is that it so resolutely 
holds to the ground of experience and refuses 
to give the name of reality to anything apart 
from experience (save of, course, to the trans- 
cendental and unknown cause or causes of all 
experience). What is the meaning, then, of 
an assertion that such a world of experience is 
illusory? Illusory means, according to the or- 
dinary usage, what does not correspond with 
real facts. But in this case what are the real 
facts with which we can contrast the world 
of experience? Of facts separate (or separa- 
ble) from the mind, the idealist does not allow 
that we know anything (the transcendental 
realm being left out of account — and indeed of 
it we know nothing, though we are obliged to 
think or posit it). All facts (in his view) are 
facts of mind, that is, of mental experience, 
and the idealistic analysis does not leave us 
enough reality (separate from the mind) to con- 
stitute the possibility of illusion. 

The semi-idealism which has been more or 
less held in the past might be said to make 
much of the world illusory. For it asserts 
that matter in its essential or primary qualities 
(extension, resistance, motion) exists separate 
from the mind; hence the ordinary man's notion 



DIFFICULTIES WITH IDEALISM 35 

that colors and sounds and odors (which the 
semi-idealist admits to be subjective) inhere in 
such an independent material world is palpably 
an illusion. But a thorough-going analysis 
finds the primary qualities of matter to be sub- 
jective in the same sense that the secondary 
qualities are. The whole material world is but 
an effect on us; hence illusory is a word inap- 
plicable to it or to any part of it. If we had 
no waking hours, we should not call our dreams 
illusory ; and it is but an affectation of knowledge 
to give the name of dreams to our daylight 
experiences. For who knows, or has reason to 
believe, that there is anything more real than 
these daylight experiences (outside the tran- 
scendental sources from which they come)? 

But if the world, as the idealist interprets it, 
may not properly be called illusory, does not 
another difficulty arise? Are not all objects 
made in this way equally real, so that there 
remains no way in which there can be anything 
illusory at all? Yet any view that would allow 
no validity to the common distinction between 
real and imaginary things would run into the 
absurd. How does this distinction arise? How 
can the duality be explained save by supposing 
that there are two orders of existence, one in 
the mind and the other out of the mind? The 
answer is not difficult. The duality and the 



36 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

distinction are not denied. The idealist sim- 
ply says that the contrast is not between what 
is in the mind and what is outside of it, but 
between two orders of existence in the mind. 
"Illusory" means that a thought, judgment or 
expectation does not correspond with a sensation. 
Let me illustrate. Suppose that I think that 
I might suspend myself in mid-air, or at least 
that I might emulate the bold enterprise of 
"Darius Green and his flying-machine" and suc- 
ceed better than he. I make the experiment; 
with the requisite paraphernalia, I venture forth 
from a second-story barn window. But alas! I 
beat my wings in vain; and after a moment's 
floundering I am on the ground "all'n a lump" — 
bruised, humiliated, undeceived. Plainly my 
actual experience did not correspond with my 
anticipation. Why then may not the antici- 
pation be called illusory? Yet my actual ex- 
perience is just as much subjective as my ex- 
pectation was. Indeed the idealist may well say 
that only in acccordance with the terms of his 
theory can any ideas or expectations be proved 
to be illusory ; for the only way is to experience 
some sensation or succession of sensations that 
contradict these ideas or expectations. 

The revealer and real enemy of illusions is 
not any so-called reality outside and indepen- 
dent of us, but experience itself. The distinc- 



DIFFICULTIES WITH IDEALISM 37 

tions of truth and error, fact and fiction, reality 
and illusion, have as much validity to the ideal- 
ist as to any one else. For we have not only 
sensations, but thoughts of them — thoughts of 
what they were or may be ; and thoughts ac- 
quiring a kind of independence of the sensa- 
tions, their truth and worth can only be tested 
by learning whether or no they correspond to 
the sensations. Illusoriness can only be in our 
thoughts. It is meaningless to say that a 
pain I experience is illusory and just as mean- 
ingless that any color or sound or resistance is 
illusory. A thought or expectation, however, 
(for example, to the effect that I am going to 
experience a pain at a certain time or a resist- 
ance or a sound) may be illusory ; or a thought 
or belief that I or some one else did experience 
such things at a certain time in the past. Mis- 
takes are always mistakes of judgment ; I may 
be mistaken in locating, explaining or expect- 
ing sensations, but not in experiencing them.* 
The sensations are all subjective, but they 
are all real. No one would care to know of 
anything much more real than an acute pain 
under which he is suffering ; it would hardly 
console him to tell him that the pain is merely 

* Compare Aristotle, ' 'The perception of the qualities pe- 
culiar to each sense is always true * * ' ; thought on 
the contrary, maybe false as well as true." (Psychology^ 
III, 3, § 3, Wallace's Translation, p. 145). 



38 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

a sensation. Why, then, should the world, as 
the idealist views it, be spoken of slightingly as 
only a tissue of sensations, merely subjective and 
the like? Why should the light, color, beauty, 
movement of nature be ranked less highly, 
because they are what we experience and not 
things existing whether we experience them or 
not? 



CHAPTER III 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 



a 



In Goethe's tragedy, after Faust has pro- 
nounced his successive curses on ambition, 
mammon, hope, faith and patience, the chorus 
of spirits laments : 

"Woe! woe! 

Thou hast it destroyed, 

The beautiful world." 

They will not, however, give him over to 

despair, but turn upon him with divine cheer : 

"Mightier 

For the children of men, 

Brightlier 

Build it again 

In thine own bosom, build it anew." 

It would be straining a comparison to say 

that we shall now attempt to do for the sensi- 
ble world what Faust was summoned to do for 

the world of human aims and passions which 

he had so rudely destroyed. For, in truth, the 

idealist has not destroyed the sensible world, 

39 



40 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

(nor sought to) but only the notion (so sedu- 
lously cherished by many) of its separateness 
from ourselves. Indeed, if he had destroyed it, 
it would be quite beyond his power to build it 
again. For we do not create our sensations, 
nor can we. We do not think of color, and 
then by an act of will make it stand before our 
eyes. We cannot conjure up harmonies of 
sound and then actually hear them."^ Our sen- 
sations come we know not how nor whence ; our 
sole knowledge is that they are, in a very lim- 
ited way, subject to our control. They come 
in order ; but, save within certain limits, we do 
not determine that order, and can not determine 
it ; we have simply to recognize and accept it, as 
we do the sensations themselves. In propos- 
ing a work of reconstruction, then, the idealist 
has no notion of evolving the world out of his 
own thought, or inner consciousness, so called. f 

* Compare Shakespeare's lines: 

"O! who can hold a fire in his hand 
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? 
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite 
By bare imagination of a feast? 
Or wallow naked in December snow 
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?" 

{Richard 11.) 

\ This would be a spurious Idealism in the light of the 
preceding analysis. An instance of it is in the following 
from Emerson: "Philosophy affirms that the outward world 
is only phenomenal and the whole concern of dinners, of tail- 
prs, of gigs, of balls whereof men make such account, an intri- 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE />,! 

He wishes simply to show that his demolition 
of the external world has been only a demolition 
of a wrong opinion of it, that a rea/, external 
world is just as truly his property as any one's^ 
that the words "real" and "external" have still 
their full meaning to him, and this without for- 
getting for a moment the result of his first analy- 
sis, viz., that the whole sensible world is noth- 
ing and means nothing outside of human (or 
other sentient) consciousness. Let us proceed 
to this task : 

In a way that we have acknowledged to be 
fundamentally mysterious, we experience certain 
sensations. These sensations do not suggest 
the notion of reality, they do not lead us to 
infer something behind them that we may call 
by this name; they are reality.* A color as 



cate dream, the exhalation of the present state of the soul.'* 
(Cabot's Z?/.?, I, 217-^italics are mine.) So Carlyle speaks 
of metaphysics teaching that the very rocks and rivers ' 'are 
in strict language ///^^^a'*? by these outward senses of ours." 
{French Revolution, Book I, chap. 12.) Yet it must be ad- 
mitted that this is in accordance with popular notions of 
Idealism; and according to so careful a writer as Professor 
George P. Fisher, it is the doctrine "that sense-perception is 
a modification of the mind which is due exclusively to its 
own nature aud is elicited by no external object.'' {Princeton 
Review, July, 1882 — italics are mine.) But because the 
outward world is our experience, (and not a something apart 
from us), it does not follow that we give it to ourselves. 

■^ Professor Huxley says of odor: ' 'To say that I am aware 
of this phenomenon, or that I have it, or that it exists, are 
simply different modes of affirming the same facts. If I ani 



42 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

such,a resistance as such, is real just as a painis ; 
there is nothing to us human beings that can be 
more real ; and in fact our very notions of real- 
ity are not prior to, but are based upon these 
simple and direct sensible experiences. Where 
these sensations are to be located, how they 
are to be connected, what is their place in a 
final system of thought — these are other ques- 
tions ; but the sensations themselves are nowise 
problematical or derived; they are the data and 
material with the immediate and unquestioning 
acceptance of which our intellectual processes 
must begin. Moreover, these sensations do not 
come at hap-hazard. As we have already said, 
they do not (save within limits) obey our direc- 
tion, either in the time and place of their aris- 
ing, or in their manner of succeeding one an- 
other. Though our experiences, they are in 
another sense independent of us — that is, inde- 
pendent of our wishes, or will.. We have to 
/earn of them as truly as if the}' were alien ex- 
istences having no kind of relation to ourselves ; 
and we do soon learn that they are associated 
with or succeed one another in regular or fixed 
ways ; and hence a world, a cosmos as opposed 



asked how I know that it exists, I can only reply that my 
knowledge is immediate or intuitive, and, as such, professed 
of the highest conceivable degree of certainty." {Science 
and Cultzire, p. 258). The idealist conceives that this is the 
way in which all material phenomena exist. 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 43 

to a chaos, evolves itself out of our experiences. 
The groups of associated sensations we call ob- 
jects — the difficulty of making out and distin- 
guishing the same being simply that of dis~ 
covering which out of the numberless sensations 
thronging upon us are really associated. The 
uniformities of succession among objects we 
call laws, the exact formulation of which is a 
still more intricate and difficult task. It may, 
perhaps, be unfortunate that we have no other 
word than "law" to designate a uniformity of 
succession, since in politics and ethics (not to 
say religion), where the word was, perhaps, first 
used, it has quite a different meaning.* But 
if the scientific use of it is defined, as it ordi- 
narily is by physical investigators, there is no 
need of our being confused by it, though the 
inferences not infrequently made from the laws 
of nature to a law-giver show that this confusion 
often exists. 

One of these groups of sensations is our own 

"^A law in politics or ethics, it hardly needs saying, pre- 
scribes what men are to do or ought to do; a law in physics, 
and in natural science generally^ is simply a statement of 
actual facts. The laws of the state and of morality are fre- 
quently disobeyed; those of physics are never disobeyed and 
cannot be. In fact, obedience and disobedience are mis- 
leading terms in the physical sphere. Bodies do not fall in 
obedience to the law of gravitation, but the law of gravita- 
tion is simply a statement of the general fact that they do fall. 
See a clear statement in Professor Huxley's Introductory 
Frimer,^ g. 



44 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

body. It is true that all phenomena are our 
own accordiftg to the idealistic hypothesis — a 
stone, or a tree, or a star equally with the body. 
But there are reasons for calling the latter 
especially our own. First, we have a double 
set of sensations in connection with our body. 
When I strike my face with my hand, I exper- 
ience not only a sensation of resistance in m}' 
hand but also one in my face. When, however, 
I strike the stone, I have but a single sensa= 
tion, viz., in my hand. The assertion maybe 
ventured that if the stone on being struck gave 
me a sensation as my own face does when struck, 
I should though quite perplexed and mystified 
feel that in some way it was a part of me. It 
may be questioned, indeed, whether my own 
body does not mean so much of the sensible 
world as yields these double sensations. A 
second reason is that with these sensations we 
call our body, is connected our general power 
of sensation. We are not so dependent on the 
stone or tree or star; if any particular one of 
these were removed or destroyed we could see 
or feel quite as well as before. But if the 
minor groups of sensations I call my ear is 
removed, I no longer hear; if my eyes are 
plucked out, I no longer see. Yes, though the 
external organs remain uninjured, if but those 
delicate fibres connecting them with the brain 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 45 

be destroyed or only severed, I no longer hear 
or see ; and if that group of sensations we call 
the brain exists no longer, not only hearing and 
sight vanish, but all power of thought (so far 
as we know) vanishes too. The light of a can- 
die may be snuffed out and the candle be lit 
again. The snuffed-out light of human life and 
thought is, humanly speaking, incapable of res- 
toration. As Othello says in the last fateful 
scene with the sleeping Desdemona: 

"Put out the light — and then put out thy light: 

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, 

I can thy former light restore, 

Should I repent me: — but once put out thy light, 

Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, 

I know not where is that Promethean heat 

That can thy light relume." 

In this way it is possible for the idealist to 
do ample justice to those common-sense no- 
tions of the dependence of the mind upon the 
body, which he may seem to make light of. 
The mind is dependent on the body in the sense 
that our general power of sensation and thought 
is connected with those sensations we call our 
body. Why this should be so is quite myste- 
rious. Neither physics nor physiology nor 
psychology explains it, though each of these 
sciences may present a most careful and de- 
tailed statement of facts to be explained. Why 
lay power of perceiving colors should be linked 



46 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

with the particular group of sensations I call 
my eye, I utterly fail to understand. Why it 
should not be equally well linked with some 
other group (or with no group at all and I thus 
be but mind with no bodily organism whatever) 
I can not in any way discover. But it- is enough 
for the practical uses of life, and enough for 
science, that does not concern itself about ulti- 
mate questions, to recognize that there is this 
connection. And, further, it must be stated 
that we have no proof that any other connec- 
tion — not to say the absence of all connection — 
is or ever has been actual, so that the notion 
of pure mind or spirit may be, for all we 
know, an entirely vain one, though it must be 
recognized as abstractly possible. 

It would, however, be a totally unwarrantable 
leap to infer from all this that the organs of 
sense are any wise causally related to sensa- 
tions, or that the body in general is causally 
related to the mind. It would, indeed, be for- 
getting that the organs of sense as being them- 
selves so many groups of sensible phenomena 
only exist in the mind, and thatthe body is sim- 
ply apart of our mental experience. My body is 
not a cause but a sign of my mental existence 
— a sign, that is, to some one else, or to myself 
if I could need a sign. If I should become 
blind, the condition of my visual organs would 



RECONCILIATlOJSr WITH COMMON-SENSE 47 

not be properly explanatory but simply indica- 
tory to another of the fact, and it would be in- 
dicatory to me if I could need any proof of 
that which I already knew. So death as a 
physical fact can not be seriously called an ex- 
planation of the cessation of mental activity, 
though the two for all we know may be insep- 
arably connected. Death as a series of sensi- 
ble phenomena can only exist in some one's 
mental apprehension; when my own time comes, 
for example, it will be simply a sign to some 
one else of the cessation of my mental life, and 
might be an equally significant sign to myself 
if I could die and observe my dying at the same 
time. For, if no one is present or observes me, 
there would be no physical death, properly so- 
called, but simply the inexplicable fact of my 
ceasing to feel and think. Fundamentally mys- 
terious in the same manner is man's birth and 
indeed all the stages of his earthly existence. 
Explanation is there for none of them ; the 
explanations and causes of which we are accus- 
tomed to speak in the sphere of sensible pheno- 
mena are but man's own experiences, and so far 
from their explaining man, man is necessary 
to explain them. What in turn explains man 
is the world-riddle. 

Nor is Science any wise inconsistent with 
such a view. The results of the physical sci- 



48 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

ences, of physiology and even of physiological 
psychology are the same on any theory. The}^ all 
have to do with mental experiences, according 
to the idealist. He will not care to interpose 
a word save when the physical or physiologi- 
cal investigator speaks of objects as literally 
outside* the mind, or considers laws to signify 
more than matter-of-fact connections, or uses 
necessity in a sense which Professor Huxle}^ 
emphatically repudiates. f Idealism is not a 
question of any special science, but relates to 
a general understanding of all the sciences. As 
here considered it must not be identified with 
a prior? systems of thought, with transcendental- 
ism or intuitionalism, ^s those words are fre- 
quently understood. It is no wise inconsist- 
ent with the view that all our knowledge of 
the sensible world is gained by experience, that 
is, with pure empiricism. In fact, idealism 
may claim to have a special affinity with the 
spirit and methods of modern science, since 
science, too, calls for experience and does not 
concern itself about matters that lie beyond ex- 
perience. If any object can not actually or con- 
ceivably be brought within the range of sensi- 
ble experience, it is as good as non-existent to 

* Popularly the language is perfectly allowable, as will 
be explained further on. 

f Lay Sermons, p. 144. 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 49 

the scientific investigator; and this may be said 
without implying that the scientific investigator 
ma}' not forget his special and after all rather 
limited role, and as a human being conjecture 
and speculate and hope and believe like the 
rest of mankind. 

Let us now consider briefly the meaning of 
the externality of the world. The externality 
of one's own body means very little unless the 
thought is that one's body is not a mere idea, 
but a real group of sensations. For that our 
body is literally external to ourselves has 
meaning only if "ourselves" has some position, 
relatively to which the body is external. But, 
as we have seen, there is no warrant for such 
an assertion, "ourselves" being simply that to 
which the body and all sensible objects exist 
and have meaning. Few, however, are concerned 
about so awkward and doubtful a conception as 
the externality of our own body, and that about 
which we are concerned — the reality of the 
world external to our body — the idealist may 
assert as unhesitatingly as the most vigorous 
defender of common sense. And this is the in- 
terpretation the idealist puts upon the ordinary 
opinion that there is a world outside of our- 
selves, viz., it means that there is a world out- 
side our body. The ellipsis is easily explica- 
ble since our body is "ourselves" in a sense that 



50 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

no other group of phenomena is, as before ex- 
plained. And why should we not as im- 
mediately know a world external to the body as 
the body itself? The hardness of the ground I 
may know just as immediately as I do that of 
m}^ cranium. The color of another's eyes I can 
note even more easily than I can that of my 
own. The external world is not to be called an 
inference. Such a way of speaking rests on 
misconceptions which it has been the en- 
deavor of this essay to clear up. Neither com- 
mon sense nor genuine philosophy counte- 
nances it. It is half-enlightenment. The whole 
sensible world — the ground as well as the 
human body that stands upon it, the air as 
well as the lungs, and the heavens as well as 
the earth — all is equally real and is known with 
equal immediateness ; that is, it is real viewed 
as the real experience of son>e sentient subject, 
and unreal — and the whole equally unreal — if 
regarded as a self-subsisting thing apart from 
a sentient subject. Hence the renewed 
necessity for asserting the purely provisional 
character of the language used at the begin- 
ning of this inquiry. The external world is not, 
in any strictness, simply certain mysterious 
entities in the brain at the other end of com- 
plicated nerve-processes. If so pitiable a re- 
duction were made of this vast and splendid 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 5I 

spectacle about us, the idealist could hardly 
receive or merit the serious attention of his 
fellow-men. The world is as great — yes, pos- 
sibly as infinite — in extent and duration to the 
idealist as to any one ; for it is not merely what 
we experience, but all we can experience and 
all that we can conceive that we might experi- 
ence, if there were no limits to our powers. 
In fact a limitless experience would be but an- 
other name for a limitless world, and the so- 
called "mysterious entities" in the brain, it had 
better be acknowledged, are a fiction. Physi- 
ology can get along well enough without them ; 
and the true office of physiology, it may be re- 
marked, is not to discover for us the causes of 
sensations, but to investigate a certain group 
of sensations — viz ; those that make up what 
we call our bodily organisms. Indeed in the 
idealistic theory all the sciences become in 
some sense branches of psychology* and it may 
be questioned whether there can be any sepa- 
rate science bearing that name. If there'is to 
be, it must be either an account of each indi- 
vidual's own mental experiences (or world), or 
of general human powers of sensation and 
thought as opposed to the content or objects 
with which they are concerned. f 

* Compare Aristotle's language: "The soul is in away all 
existing things." (Psychology, III, 8, § i.) 

fThe distinction between states of consciousness and 



5^ FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

For the distinction between subject and object 
is valid to the idealist, as it must be to every 
one who thinks. A color is not strictly speak- 
ing ourselves, nor is an odor or a resistance. 
They are what we experience and the full state- 
ments would be — we perceive the color, and 
scent the odor and feel the resistance. It is even 
possible at times to realize that the pain we 
may experience is not strictly ourselves, but that 
under which we suffer, though pains and pleas- 
ures are not shapeable into definite objects as 
other sensations are. The idealist only insists 
that the object shall not be separated from the 
subject and treated as if it were a thing in 
itself. We are all aware how the moonbeams 
seem to follow us as we go along a stream of 
water on a moonlight night'. According to the 
idealist — and here according to the ordinary 
teaching of the physicist as well — they do fol- 
low us, and as rays of light have no existence 
apart from us, the idealist simply adding that 
this is true in respect to all material existence. 
But for all this, the moonbeams are not our- 
selves, and sensible phenomena in general (nor 



external objects (as the subject matter, respectively, of 
psychology and the physical sciences) is a fictitious one. 
External objects exist only (save in their transcendental 
causes) as states of consciousness, actually or potentially. 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 53 

the whole sum of them) are not ourselves, 
though it may be, for all we know, that we 
can have no existence apart from them any 
more than they from us. 

Sensible is perhaps a good, if technical, word 
for a sensation viewed on its objective side; 
for, meaning as it does, that which may be per- 
ceived or felt, it immediately suggests that which 
perceives or feels — viz ; the subject, which 
alone is sefitiens. Subject and object so taken 
are evidently not inferences from sensations, 
but analytical statements of what sensation 
implies. Neither of them means a substance 
(in the nebulous sense of that word, i. e.^ some 
unknowable entity behind the sensation), the 
one being simply that which knows and the 
other that which is known. For the sake of 
the utmost clearness it might be well to use 
the word se7tsibilia wherever sensations are re- 
garded on their objective side; since sound, 
color, weight, etc., are not sensations in the 
sense of being themselves sentient or of im- 
plying a sentient subject behind them, save in 
the case of those groups of sensations we call 
other human beings (or animals or the lower 
sentient creation generally) ; but are rather the 
content of (or objective element in) sensations. 
Hence, it could be said as it was (in effect) 
earlier that our own sensations never reveal to 



54 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

US sensations in another. Our own sensations 
have for their content or object simply material 
qualities. The sensations of others are not a 
matter of observation, but of inference, and 
exist only to our imagination or thought. The 
different meanings of words have in general to 
be intrusted to the intelligence of the reader 
unless a scholastic precision of statement is 
attempted. Moreover, the purpose of these 
chapters is not to build up a complete theor}' 
of existence, but simply to bring out the sub- 
jective implications of material phenomena (of 
which we are ordinarily unconscious). ^'Sensi- 
bilia' excellently combines both the objective 
and subjective meanings of these phenomena — 
for the phenomena are objective in the sense 
that they are objects to the mind and not the 
mind itself, and they are subjective in the sense 
that they imply the mind to which they exist. 
And yet a consequence of idealism must now 
be more distinctly considered which may seem 
almost to cancel the merit of the reconstructive 
efforts we have been making. Reality (save 
in the transcendental sense) being placed in 
our experience and not in something apart 
from experience, what can be said of objects 
when we do not experience them? A rather 
awkward phrase has already been used now 
and then — possible sensation. It can hardly 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 55 

be defined save by showing how the idealist is 
led to use it. An odor that we scent is real; 
it is real in our seosation of it; what, then, is 
it when we do not scent it? Plainly, we can 
only answer, a possible sensation or reality. 
And we may accustom ourselves to this view 
of odors, and, perhaps, of sounds, without much 
difficulty ; but it seems almost impossible to 
realize it in connection with colors and resist- 
ances. Can it be, we ask, that the grass is 
green only when we look at it and the ground 
hard only when we tread upon it? Look at 
the grass as often as we like and turn upon it 
as stealthy glances as we can, it always has 
this color. But, in this very simple illustra- 
tion, is it not possible that we can discover our 
real meaning in calling it always green? How 
do we know it to be so when we do not look 
at it? Surely we do not know. But this we 
know, that, look at it as often as we like, we 
always find it so ; it was so this morning and 
is this afternoon and will be, we are sure, to- 
morrow and next day, and so on, as long as 
the summer lasts and we may run back with 
equal confidence in the past. How, then, can 
we better express our confidence that these 
sensations are so continuously possible, than 
by saying that the grass is always green, and 
since it is so independently of our will, that it 



56 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

is SO quite apart from ourselves? This is sim- 
ply popular language, by no means misleading or 
untrue. It is only when put to exact philo- 
sophical uses and made to mean that color is 
independent of our sensations that the idealist 
cares to interpose ; and here let me renew a 
statement already in substance made, that it is 
not his object to deny any of the common con- 
victions of men so much as to show what they 
really are — that is, how they arose and what 
they mean. "The^ground is always hard" means 
that we have always found it so, and believe 
we shall always find it so, and, as we can easily 
in thought go beyond the limits of our own 
lives, that this will be the experience of men in 
the future, whether after fifty or five hundred 
years. Similarly we may go out in space and 
say that distant objects are hard, having the 
same confidence as to the moon's surface that 
we have as to the top brick of 9, neighboring 
chimney — meaning in both cases not that they 
are so irrespective of ourselves (or any sentient 
being) but simply that, if we go near enough, 
we shall find them so. The world thus means 
an order of possible (rather than actual) sen- 
sations, stretching out in space and backward 
and forward in time.* 



*No realistic view of space and time is her3 necessarily 
implied. Space and time may be simply abstractions from 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 57 

Does then the world, as more than the lim- 
ited number of our actual sensations, exist only 
to our imagination or thought? Yes, though 
with a decided difference from those of our 
imaginations and thoughts which are not capa- 
ble of being converted into experience. The 
scientific imagination is no more an arbitrary 
thing than sensation. I can indeed fancy what 
I like, can think of trees with their roots in 
the air, of horses with ten legs, etc., but scien 
tific imagination is that which limits itself, 
viz., to real possibilities of sensation, and sim- 
ply presents to us a large and flowing picture 
of these possibilities. And imagination may 
present us with sensations that were possible 
at a time when no sentient being actually ex- 
isted and hence never became actual sensa- 
tions ; for example, the appearance of the earth 
in the earliest geological epochs. Yes, the 
steps antecedent to the separate existence of the 
earth, passing along which the scientific imag- 
ination rises to the thought of an original fiery 
mist or nebula, are but the stages of a possible 
experience, which we might think of ourselves 
as having, though in fact no sentient beings 
of the kind that we know could possibly have 
existed then. And the conversion of the nebu- 



our sensible experience, so far as the necessities of Idealism 
are concerned. Whether they are so, is a question that 
does not now concern u§^ 



58 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

lar hypothesis into an assured knowledge (if 
that were possible) would not be due to a leap 
from ourselves out into "reality" so called, but 
to an ascertaining that what we before conjec- 
tured to have been- a possible experience, we 
now somehow k7iow to have been a possible 
experience and the only possible one. Once 
with the notion of fixedness in my present pos- 
sibilities of experience, I can, as I do, unhes- 
itatingly entend it to all past time as well as 
to the most distant space. Idealism intro- 
duces not one particle of uncertainty or varia- 
bility into the whole realm with which science 
deals.* So imagination may present us with 

* Though, of course, knowledge attaches only to the expe- 
rience of the moment, and memory like expectation is a kind 
of belief, there is a clear line of distinction between beliefs 
with regard to what were (or might have been or may be- 
come) matters of experience and those relating to matters of 
which there can be, in the present state of our faculties, no 
experience — e. g., the whole sphere of the supersensible. 
The former are scientific, the latter speculative beliefs. 

As to the general question of the compatibility of the 
positive sciences with the idealistic theory, I cannot resist the 
temptation to quote the remarks of one of the most pene- 
trating of American thinkers, the late Chauncey Wright. 
After saying (in a letter to Francis E. Abbot) that 
Idealism is rather a definition of the nature of certain ob- 
jects than a denial of their existence, he goes on, " there is 
nothing in positive, science or the study of phenomena and 
their laws which idealism conflicts with. (See Berkeley). 
Astronomy is just as real a science, as true an account of 
phenomena and their laws, if phenomena are only mental 
states as on any other theory. You say that the facts and 
laws of the universe recorded in Humboldt's 'Cosmos' were 
in nowise conditional on the existence of Humboldt's mind, 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 59 

the supposed waves of the ethereal medium, 
with the molecules and atoms out of which the 
world is believed to be constructed, and with 
the particles of our own brains, which could 
only become actual sensations (to ourselves or 
to any one else) at the risk of all further power 
of sensation on our part. 

Are, then, all these objects that exist to our 
imagination not real objects? Is the bram of 
each one of us but a thought? and was the 
earth, antecedent to the appearance of sentient 
beings upon it, but a possibility and not a 
reality? An inquiry mi^ht, indeed, be made 
as to the final meaning of reality ; but adher- 
ing to the ordinary notion of it as something 
possessed of sensible qualities, there is no way 

or of any other human mind. I readily admit that little or 
nothing characteristic of an individual mind like Humboldt's 
would be likely to appear among the recorded facts and laws 
of the universe; yet these facts and laws are accounts of 
things seen and heard and weighed and smelt and tasted. 
They are the orders of invariable and unconditional se- 
quences and coexistences among the sensations of colors 
and sounds and pressures and odors and savors, none of 
which could exist without a mind. These facts and laws, 
you say, "survive the death of generation after generation 
of scientific men;" but as they describe what only eyes can see 
and ears hear, some sort of minds, human or other, scientific 
or vulgar, are essential to their continued existence. What 
would be those aspects of the heavens which astronomers 
observe and predict, if no rtiinds were in existence? Noth- 
ing surely but a potentiality. A statement of what can be 
seen under given circumstances must surely include the cir- 
cumstances of the presence of eyes with a mind to see." 
(Let^rs, p. 132). 



6o FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

of escape for the idealist; he must give an 
affirmative answer. The brain has a gray color 
only when some one sees it, and its varied tex- 
ture means nothing save in some one's experi- 
ence. The earth, as a combination of sensible 
qualities and objects, began with the first sen- 
tient existence upon it. The brains of all of 
us living men exist only (save in their tran- 
scendental causes) to our imagination. Flowers 
have, strictly speaking, no sweetness to waste 
on the desert air. The violets I may find on 
a lonely ramble in the woods, and which I am 
sure no one saw before me, did not exist as 
violets till I found them. What gives them 
to me I know not, though they are gifts and 
imply a giver as well as a receiver. I do not 
create them by coming upon them and I could 
not, if I would, change them at will, turning 
them into daises or roses. And I might have 
found them an hour or a day or perhaps a 
week before, and this continual possibility of 
experience I may picture under the form of 
their actual existence all this time. And so 
may I picture my own brain, or the earth long 
before man or any sentient creature appeared 
on it. They are all true pictures, for they are 
pictures of what we might experience or might 
have experienced, but they are only pictures and 
have no meaning apart from those who sketch 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 6l 

or comtemplate them. And if there is or was 
no actual experience, there is or was no reality 
(save in the transcendental sense of that word). 
The reader, who, whether a philosopher or 
not, is sure that he is not lacking in common 
sense, will perhaps turn from such a conclusion 
in disgust. And though the idealist is very 
loath to part company with common sense, since 
he conceives it his duty to interpret and not to 
contradict the common opinions of mankind — 
and knows that he has no other instrument for 
his conclusions than men in general have for 
theirs, namely, human reason, and that a real 
contradiction would logically necessitate skep- 
ticism — yet as simple matter of psychological 
fact, he may admit for himself that it is no 
easy thing to bear his theory always in mind. 
Idealism is not what he naturally and habitu- 
ally thinks; it is the result of analysis and re- 
flection, and implies an open-mindedness, a pa- 
tience and a determination to think that are 
not with us as a gift of nature and are rarely 
used by us save to reach some tangible or prac- 
tical goal. Philosophy may be acknowledged 
to be not unlike ethics in that it holds before 
us not so much what is (in our thoughts), as 
what ought to be. We know in our moments 
of moral seriousness what we ought to do, yet 
in the stress and struggle of life we may often 



62 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

forget the moral ideal and even seek to excuse 
or justify whatever line of conduct we pursue. 
So in an hour of philosophical reflection we 
may clearly see that the world about us, "all the 
choir of heaven and the furniture of the earth," 
(to quote from Bishop Berkeley) are but our 
sensations and no more separate from us than 
our triumphs or our pains ; that the world is 
our world and that its greatness instead of be- 
littling us is, in one sense, our own greatness ; 
and yet in our ordinary work-a-day existence 
forget the philosophical truth, lose sight of the 
significance of our intellectual being, divide 
ourselves into mind and body, contrast the world 
within with the world without, sensation and 
reality, and become hardened and stiffened in 
all the customary abstractions, which, no doubt, 
serve a purpose, else they would not be made, 
but are after all but a kind of working armor 
for this earthly life, and have no fixedness or 
finality to the mind within. It is the mind 
that has made these abstractions and the mind 
can unmake them, or what is the same, trans- 
cend them. It can in times, not of aberration 
or affectation of transcendental insights, but of 
simple genuine thinking, throw off the armor 
and breathe free. And philosophy is injured 
no more than ethics by allowing that we do 
not always heed its demands. It is enough 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 63 

that when we think we know it to be true, as 
it is enough that when our moral nature rises 
from its sleep, we know that the good and the 
just are intrinsically binding upon us. 

And yet there is such a thing as intellectual 
seriousness. A genuine moral seriousness will 
not allow us to think of the good as simply a 
fair ideal which wemaynowand there recall only 
for the sake of a kind of aesthetic satisfaction;^ 
it makes us set our hearts upon the ideal and 
turn life into a prolonged endeavor to realize 
its requirements. So intellectual seriousness is 
not consistent with recognizing the truth at one 
moment and the next forgetting it, not to say 
contradicting it; an effort must at least be 
made to bring the truth of philosophy into our 
habitual thoughts. And the objection can not 
be allowed to be valid that idealism may pos- 
sibly answer as a theory for the closet, but will 
not do for the street and practical life. Because 
a headache is a sensation, I need to be no 
less wary in guarding against it by proper ex- 
ercise and diet. Because a resistance is only 
a sensation, I may be none the less on the 
lookout that I do not experience it too forcibly ; 
for there may be signs of its possible approach 
as truly as there may be signs of an approach- 
ing headache. What difference, I should like 
to know, does it make to me whether the pave= 



64 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

ment is always hard or not, so long as I always 
find it so, and am sure I always shall? Expec- 
tation may be so vivid and confident as to 
amount to knowledge. I might even say that 
we have no practical concern whatever with 
the qualities of bodies, save as we believe we 
may experience them. Why should I fear a 
falling stone more than a falling feather, save 
as I know that a very recognizable sensation 
will come from the one that will not come from 
the other? 

Yet if all this were not true, the honest and 
philosophical way to meet idealism would be 
not to expose the practical absurdity of it, nor 
to find fault with any of its remote general 
conclusions, but to turn back upon its premises 
and test the truth of its fundamental assump- 
tions and these assumptions are, in the lan- 
guage of Herbert Spencer,''' that "what we are 



•^This language may be quoted without implying that Mr. 
Spencer always speaks consistently with it. Elsewhere {Psy- 
chology, § 469) he speaks of ideas as depending on pre-existent 
nervous plexuses and waves of molecular motion much in the 
manner of the ordinary uncritical realist. But what are these 
nervous plexuses and waves of molecular motion? Are 
they not material and as such possessed of, at least, 
the essential properties of matter? And does not Mr. 
Spencer teach that the properties of matter are "subjective 
affections?" How then, can these affections be treated as if 
they were independent of the subject and capable of pro- 
ducing effects in it? Professor Huxley has distinctly 
attempted to harmonize whatever inconsistency may seem 
to lie in his own assertions, now of idealism, and now 



RECONCILIATION WITH COMMON-SENSE 65 

conscious of as properties of matter, even down 
to its weight and resistance, are but subjective 
affections produced by objective agencies which 
are unknown and unknowable*' (^Psychology , § 86) 
— a sentence which contains in brief the whole 
of what I have been saying. So if any one of the 
properties of matter is not such a "subjective 
affection," but a reality apart from all subject- 
ive affections, idealism is overthrown and the 
sensible world to this extent exists as truly 
when we do not experience it as when we do. 

of materialism, and idealism is always with him the ultimate 
truth, though not so much by contradicting as by furnishing 
a solvent for materialism. (See his Hume, pp. 78, 79, and 
Science and Culture, p. 280). From Professor Huxley the 
present writer wishes to acknowledge that he received his 
first lessons in idealism, though he can not assume that 
his teacher will approve of the detailed elaboration of 
the theory here oresented. 



C^U.4^*^ 






IjU^^pJLcif 



Z2:ux^^ ^ o^^^r.-^ o:tt^ ^^5"*^^. "y-^t^ 



CHAPTER IV 

SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS 

It may be well in closing this inquiry to for- 
mally enumerate some of the implications and 
consequences of the idealistic theory : 

I. Reality (so far as material things are con- 
cerned) is not to be opposed to sensation, but 
is sensation, actual or possible. Truth, in this 
realm, means not the correspondence of sensa- 
tion to some reality apart from it, but of thought 
to sensation. 

II. Matter is not the cause of our sensations, 
not a metaphysical substratum behind them, 
but a general name for the sensations, viewed 
on their objective side (pleasure and pain ex- 
cepted). And force, it may be added, as sci- 
ence can deal with it, is not a mystical entity 
behind material phenomena, but is these phe- 
nomena themselves viewed in certain relations 
to one another. A stone as such, an arm as 
such, a head of water (as so much weight in 
such and such a position) are forces, actual or 

66 



SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS 67 

potential ; that is, they can produce, (or what 
is the same, be followed by) changes in the 
state of other objects.* If we use force in 
another sense we venture into a metaphysical 
region with which science is not concerned. 

III. Phenomena (that is, sensations) are not 
to be classed in philosophical strictness as 
physical and mental, since all phenomena as 
such are mental. But we may either experi- 
ence phenomena or think of them; that is, we 
may have sensations or thoughts, and the lat- 
ter may be called par eminence, mental or psy- 
chical phenomena. Noumena are the unknown 
causes of sensations necessarily posited if we 
regard sensations as effects in us. If matter is 
regarded as an independent reality, it is diffi- 
cult to see why the term "phenomenon" should 
be applied to it; and if it is applied, what 
other than verbal reason there can be for suppos- 
ing the existence of noumena. Matter, in such 
an understanding of it, becomes itself noumenal. 

IV. Object \^ a group or assemblage of phe- 
nomena (sensations) and law is a statement of 
a constant relation obtaining between objects. 
Mind is not a mysterious somewhat lying back 
of thoughts and sensations, but simply that which 
thinks and feels; not a substance, but a subject. 

* For light on this point the writer is indebted to Prof, 
William James. {^The Feeling of Effort, pp. 29, 30). 



68 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

Substance is a conception liable to lead us astray 
in other than material connections, and, if used, 
should at least be carefully defined. Substance 
and attribute, or subject and predicate, are purely 
logical categories when applied to non-sentient 
objects (e. g., in the proposition, a stone is 
hard), though, perhaps, containing the harm- 
less illusion that the qualities of objects have 
some such centre of unity as we call subject or 
ego in ourselves. 

V. The causative mstinct does not find an 
answer to its questionings in the sphere of sens- 
ible phenomena. Sensible phenomena are but 
so many effects, though so orderly in their 
connections that from one phenomenon we may 
often with well-nigh unlimited practical cer- 
tainty infer the existence of others associ- 
ated with it. Science studies these phenomena 
and their connections ; and if it speaks of cause 
and effect, it means antecedent and consequent; 
if it speaks of necessary connection, it means 
no more than matter-of-fact invariability of con- 
nection. The causative instinct impels^ then, 
to metaphysical speculation. Metaphysics^ in 
the idealistic theory, is not concerned with the 
last elements of the sensible world,, but with 
the causes of this world, its elements included. 
Whether metaphysics can ever become more than 
a problem remains undetermined ; it can not, 



SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS 69 

however, become science — i.e, verified specula- 
tion — in the present state of human faculties. 

VI. Idealism in nowise affects any truth of science y 
and for all that it asserts, pure empiricism may 
be the true philosophy. It simply holds that 
all the truths of science are truths of mental 
experience (actual or possible). But none of 
the mind's objects (which are its experiences) 
can explain the mind itself. They have no 
existence (save in their unknown causes) out- 
side the mind, and hence assertions, as that 
"mind is a function of the brain," however 
popularly allowable, are in philosophical strict- 
ness either tautology or illusion. The general 
significance of idealism is simply that mind 
(that is, sentient existence of some sort) is made 
essential to the system of sensible things. It 
is no longer an incident, a by-play, a result of 
organization, comparable to the perfume of a 
rose or the music of a piano, but the indis- 
pensable prerequisite of any sensible existence. 

The world-problem is thereby simplified. It 
is no longer to account for mind and matter, 
(in the separate sense) but for mind and its 
experiences. Idealism (as here stated) is not, 
however, itself a solution, being only a clear 
statement of what the problem is ; and for all 
that such idealism can say, the problem may 
be insoluble. 



70 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

VII. Materialism is not to be met by direct 
attack any more than common-sense, from 
which it is not essentially different. It is not so 
much an untrue as an approximate way of 
thinking. Its only weakness is that it does 
not understand the meaning of its own terms. 
The doctrine of the indestructibility of mat- 
ter, for example, is perfectly true. But what 
does it mean? To uncritical minds, it seems 
to assert a brute datum existing outside of us, 
surviving our coming and going, a kind of 
material deity. But scientifically speaking, 
the indestructibility of matter means the un- 
changeability of the weight of its elements. 
Weight, however, means pressure, and pressure 
is what a sentient being feels or might feel and 
has in consequence no meaning apart from sen- 
lient beings. The indestructibility of matter 
is really a statement of the constancy of certain 
sensations. Materialism thas simply needs to 
be led to reflect. It does not stand to idealism as 
a rival philosophy, but is simply a na'ive, uncrit- 
ical way of thinking, while idealism, if true, is 
philosophy — philosophy being (as I use theterm 
now) no more than thought cleared of obscur- 
ity and assumption. The only charge against 
materialism is, that it can be finally stated only 
in terms of idealism ; and hence it may itself 
become idealism if it will but abandon the 



SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS /I 

schoolboy "cocksureness" which is too apt to 
characterize it, and proceed to the not always 
welcome task of self-examination. 



PART II— ETHICAL 



CHAPTER I 

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DUTY? THE ELEMENTS OF 

THE IDEA 

The human mind may turn its attention in 
two directions. It may either study what is 
or think of what should be. In the former case 
it is strictly bound by the facts which lie be- 
fore it; in the latter, it is free to escape the 
limits of the actual and to picture what in con- 
tradistinction to the actual we call the ideal. 

Let us imagine ourselves observing the work- 
ings of another's mind. We see, perhaps, that 
his thoughts are confused and that his reason- 
ing is careless and illogical ; that he is swayed 
more or less by his prejudices — that his instinc- 
tive aversions and attractions tend to rule his 
mental processes. We have no choice but to 
recognize this, if we wish to have an idea of 
the man as he is. And yet we can hardly 

avoid conceiving of him as thinking accurately 

72 



WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DUTY? 73 

and logically; we may be said to do so by 
implication if not explicitly,if we pass any judg- 
ment on him at all. In this case, we conceive 
him as he should be rather than as he is. 
Or we may observe the habits of a commun- 
ity. We may notice the way its members treat 
one another, the employers those whom they 
employ, parents their children, the rulers the 
citizens; we may note the institutions and the 
laws. And then again we may conjure up in 
our minds the same community as ruled in 
all its relations by the principles of justice and 
love. In the one case we have as the result 
a scientifically faithful picture; in the other 
case, a picture that has no scientific worth what- 
ever, that is actually false, and yet in which, 
if it were true, the mind would rest satisfied. 

In our own every day behavior, we con- 
stantly make the same distinction. What we 
do is often one thing and what we admit we 
ought to do quite another; the one belongs to 
the category of the actual, the other to that of 
the ideal. 

For convenience's sake we may characterize 
these different exercises of the mind by differ- 
ent names ; the one we may call "scientific," the 
other "speculative." In the one we are guided 
by observation and experience ; in fact our re- 
sulting conceptions are but an account of what 



74 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

we observe or experience. But in conceiving of 
what should be we are without this guidance; 
in the nature of the case, the ideal — so long as 
it is the ideal — is what we do not experience. 
There may be, of course, a different use of 
terms. Conceptions may be called "scientific" 
simply in so far as they are clear (i. e., free 
from obscurity and confusion) and systematic 
(or as much so as the nature of the object will 
allow). Yet if we use this nomenclature and 
by science mean simply clarified and orderly as 
opposed to confused and unsystematic thought, 
we are none the less obliged to distinguish 
between experiential (or experimental) science 
and speculative science, the one covering our 
verified or verifiable knowledge, the other a 
knowledge (if such it can be called) that is in 
its nature unverifiable and is only gained by a 
free excursus of the mind. In other words, the 
distinction in ideas remains, however we may 
characterize it in words.* 



* Arthur James Balfour, in his A Defense of Philosophic 
Doubt, (London, 1879) argues for the "truth," that "Scien- 
tific judgments and ethical judgments deal with essentially 
different subject-matters." "Every scientific proposition," 
he says, ' 'asserts either the nature of the relation of space 
or time between phenomena which have existed, do exist, 
or will exist; or defines the relations of space or time which 
would exist if certain changes and simplifications were made 
in the phenomena (as in ideal geometry), or in the law govern- 
ing the phenomena (as in ideal physics). Roughly speaking, 
it may be said to state facts or events, real or hypothetical. 



WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DUTY? 75 

A certain rudimentary classification of the 
various Sciences or Disciplines is involved in 
such a distinction. In accordance with it, 
Logic is clearly marked off from Psychology. 
For Logic deals with certain rules of thinking 
which few persons perfectly observe, while Psy- 
chology includes mental acts and states what- 
ever their ideal worth or character. In Psy- 
chology many parts of the souPs life may have 
a place, which in Logic would be only examples 
of what should not be. Esthetics is sim- 

ilarly distinguished from all merely descrip- 
tive science; it deals not with whatever exists 
about or among us, but with standards of the 
mind, and with actual objects only so far as 



An ethical proposition, on the other hand, though, like ev- 
ery other proposition, it states a relation, does not state a 
relation of space or time. 'I ought to speak the truth,' for 
instance, does not imply that I have spoken, do speak, or 
shall speak the truth; it asserts no bond of causation be- 
tween subject and predicate, nor any co-existence, nor any 
sequence. It does not announce an event; and if some peo- 
ple would say that it stated a fact, it is not certainly a fact 
either of the 'external' or of the 'internal' world." (p. 336). 

Again, "In one sense, therefore, all ethics is 'a priori.' It 
is not, and never can be, founded on experience. Whether 
we be Utilitarians, or Egoisms, or Intuitionists, by what- 
ever name we call ourselves, the rational basis of our 
system must be something other than an experience or a 
series of experiences; for such always belong to Science." 

(p- 338). 

The chapter, "On the Idea of a Philosophy of Ethics," 
from which these quotations are made, is one of the most 
trenchant discussions of fundamental ethical philosophy 
that I have ever read. 



76 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

they correspond with them or suggest them. 
The beautiful is an idea, a standard within, not 
a transcript from without, whatever its ulti- 
mate psychological genesis. Politics, too, 
as an art, is another thing from Politics as an 
historical science; it does not essentially make 
so much difference whether it be a mean art or 
a noble one — in either case it presupposes ends 
that are desired in addition to facts that exist; 
and a rational and humane Politics would be 
simply one that used history and experience to 
rational and humane ends instead of base ones, 
and learned from the past, perhaps, as much 
by departing from its footsteps as by following 
in them. 

What is ordinarily called Political Economy 
may be said to actually suffer from a lack of 
clarification as to whether its subject-matter 
belongs to the one realm or the other. "The 
Laws of Political Economy" ha^ been a phrase 
to conjure with. These laws are said to be 
necessary and invariable; and at the same time 
warning is uttered against interfering with them. 
But if necessary and invariable they cannot be 
interfered with ; and if as the warning implies 
they can be interfered with, they are not neces- 
sary and invariable. The fact is that "laws" in 
this instance is used in two senses ; on the one 
hand as describing what actually happens when 



WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DUTY? 77 

persons are animated by intelligent self-interest 
and by that alone in striving for wealth; and 
on the other hand, as an ideal rule prescribing 
what should happen. The law of supply and 
demand, particularly as it affects wages, is an 
example. If an employer is not dominated by 
self-interest he may disregard the law consid- 
ered as an ideal rule, while as a statement of 
what happens it still remains true of the aver- 
age conduct of men in the business world.* The 
economist would do well to ask himself dis- 
tinctly at the outset, What is it I am aiming to 
do? Is my object to explore the actual world of 
industrial society and to give a report of how in- 
dustrial needs are being met,or it is to teach men 
how they should act in industrial affairs, whether 
as regards the ends to be realized or the fittest 
means to accomplish them? For in the one 
case, it is science that will be the result of his 
labors, and in the other, speculation. Both 
may be valuable and both may well be sought 
after ; but only harm can come from not being 
aware that they are distinct results, f 

^ "To refer an injustice in the economic world to demand 
and supply may possibly account for it; but it cannot be 
seriously maintained that from the point of view of the mor- 
alist or the social reformer this settles the matter." (John 
N. Keynes, The Scope and Method of Political Economy, 
London, 1891, p. 41). 

f Dr. Keynes' work just cited is a gratifying proof that 
the distinction I have contended for is beginning to be re- 



78 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

On the other hand, instances of science, 
pure and simple, are Physics, Chemistry, Bi- 
ology, Psychology, Sociology ; these have ab- 
solutely nothing to do with ideal conceptions 
(i. e., conceptions of what should be.) 

But the realm of the ideal, however contrast- 
ed it be with that of reality, has a peculiar re- 
lation to it. To speak metaphorically, the ideal 
waits to become real. It is the ideal of real- 
ity, it is that which reality should become — it 
is the goal toward which reality should aspire. 
Now an ideal may be incorporated into reality 
in two ways: either unconsciously (so far as 
the object in question is concerned), spontane- 
ously, without effort, as a clock performs its 
function of striking at the right time, as the 
moist particles in the atmosphere take their 
places in a drop of rain, as the trees grow and 
blossom ; or because the object in question 

cognized. He says, "In regard to the. scope of political 
economy, no question is more important, or in a way more 
difficult, than its true relations to practical problems. Does 
it treat of the actual or of the ideal? Is it a positive science 
concerned exclusively with the investigation of uniformi- 
ties, or is it an art having for its object the determination 
of practical rules of action? ... As the terms are here 
used, a positive science may be defined as a body of system- 
atized knowledge concerning what is; a normative or regu- 
lative science as a body of systematized knowledge discuss- 
ing criteria of what ought to be, and concerned, therefore, 
with the ideal as distinguished from the actual; an art as a 
system of rules for the attainment of a given end. 
The problem whether political economy is to be regarded 
as a positive science, or as a normative science, or as an art, 



WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DUTY? 79 

thinks of the ideal, and aims at it, and strives 
for it. We are clearly enough aware of the 
distinction in our own experience. Our bodies 
grow with scarcely any will of our own, and 
sometimes attain shapes of surprising beauty. 
Our minds attain a certain development with 
scarcely any effort that we are aware of. Some- 
times we might almost be said to be good with- 
out meaning or wishing to be. And, in mo- 
ments to which we give the name "inspired," 
even the work of our hands, our art, the monu- 
ments of our thought grow 

" • • as grows the grass." 

Yet it* is often the case, perhaps oftenest, that 
we have to labor for the ideal good we think 
of; and if we do not labor for it or think of it 
it does not come to us at all. The ideal then, 
(I mean what is not fancifully but really such 

or as a combination of these, is, to a certain extent, a ques- 
tion merely of nomenclature and classification. It is, nev- 
ertheless, most important to distinguish economic inquiries 
according as they belong to the three departments respec- 
tively; and it is also important to make clear their mutual 
relations. Confusion between them is common and has been 
the source of many mischevious errors." (pp. 31-35). The 
whole chapter from which this is taken, "On the Relation of 
Political Economy to Morality and Practice," should be 
read. 

I should add that Prof. Henry Sidgwick, in his The Frin- 
ciples of Political Econo77iy (London, 1883), also recognizes 
the distinction. See particularly the first paragraph of 
chapter II. of the Introduction, which has the heading, "Is 
Political economy a Science, concerned with what is, or an 
art, concerned with what ought to be?" 



8o FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

— for I shall speak later of the necessity of this 
qualification)* may attain realization or it ma}' 
not : it does not follow of necessity that what 
ought to be will be any more than that it is 
already; and it is at this point that we pass 
from the ideal in general to the ethical in par- 
ticular. The ethical is so much of the ideal 
as depends upon us for its realization. The 
good that takes place of itself (as we may say), 
the beautiful or beneficent in nature, for exam- 
ple, or the unwilled and unintended good in 
human history, the good that we can hardly 
help any more than hinder, that nature her- 
self provides for, is good all the same, is what 
should or ought to be — but it is not what we 
have to concern ourselves about, it has nothing 
to do with duty, it is not the basis of ethics. 
We ma}^ admire it, we may joyfully recognize 
it, we may have a blissful sense through it that 
in our essential aim we have co-operators and 
allies in the world, but it does not give us our 
task ; it does not affect us with that peculiar 
solemnity which comes from a sense of some- 
thing to be done which can only be done by our- 
selves. The ideal, that is specificall}^ ethical is 
related to the will — appeals to it, challenges 
it, lays upon it a burden; and ethics proper 



*Seep. 99 



WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DUTY? 8 1 

deals with the direction, the aims and the 
rules of a good will. 

The subject matter of ethics is then what 
should be, or the good, so far as the universe does 
not realize it and it is left to ourselves to 
realize (and I am now sketching the general idea 
of an ethics that would apply to rational beings 
other than human, if there are any, as truly as 
to ourselves). Is there then no distinction be- 
tween Ethics and the other ideal Disciplines — 
Logic, ^Esthetics, Politics and Political Econ- 
omy — mention of which has been made? Con- 
ventionally and historically there is a distinc- 
tion, but rationally speaking — that is, if we 
try to apply our reason in the matter and to go 
back to first principles — 1 can not see that any 
fundamental line of distinction exists. Logic 

as a treatment of right thinking holds up 
an ideal to the mind which is by no means 
necessarily realized apart from our will ; if we 
do not purpose to think clearly and to reason 
correctly we may not do so. In a word, logic 
proposes a rule or set of rules for our conduct 
(as thinking beings) ; it might be called the 
ethics of the intellect. I do not see why we are 
not essentially as truly under obligation to think 
logically as to be temperate or chaste. iEs- 

thetics, as far as it suggests to us any beauty 
that nature herself does not make and man 



82 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

might make, is not disseverable from ethics. 
That peculiar quality or possibility which we 
call beauty has in it its own reason for being. 
It, we may say, intrinsically deserves to be. 
And though the beautifying of our persons, our 
houses or of objects in nature may not be our 
first duty, yet could we conceive all other obli- 
gations having been met, an obligation of this 
aesthetic order would arise — so that it would 
be felt to as ill comport with the nature and 
calling of a human being to go about as a slo- 
ven, or to tolerate ugliness in his surroundings 
as it is now to lie or to cheat. Poli- 

tics, in any noble sense, politics as it should 
be, is plainly a branch or practical application 
of ethics. For such politics sets before us the 
good or welfare of a community (widely or nar- 
rowly as the case may be), a good or welfare 
that is conditioned upon our activity for its ac- 
complishment; and the difference between eth- 
ics and politics is that politics deals only 
with so much good as is to be sought by meth- 
ods of law — i. e., in the ultimate resource, by 
the use of physical force — while ethics consid- 
ers good without this restriction. True poli- 
tics is the ethics of that force-power called the 
State. Political economy, so far as it 

goes beyond the field of sociology and statis- 
tics and teaches what men should do in the 



WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DUTY? 83 

pursuit of wealth, evidently occupies the field 
of ethics and is subject to ethical principle. 
A true political economy would be dominated 
by ethical ideas both as to the ends it proposes 
and the means by which they are to be attained; 
it would be at bottom (whatever else it might 
and should add) the ethics of industrial action. 
If material well-being is desirable (i. e., a part 
of ideal good) and does not come of itself, it 
is right and is a duty to seek it ; the economic 
life of a people is a part of its ethical life, and 
it may be beautiful or sordid according as the 
higher ethical principles are or are not associ- 
ated with it — though the most sordid economic 
life is nobler than a state of sloth and inactiv- 
ity.* 

Ethics then is co-extensive with all that should 
be, whether the material or the spiritual life of 
man be taken into account, or even including the 
life of nature — so far, that is, as what should be 
depends upon us for its realization. There is 
an implication in all that I have said, however, 
which must now be distinctly stated. The im- 

*The recognition of the ethical elements in Political 
Economy is one of the distinctive marks of the newer school 
of German economists, to which Cohn, Wagner, Knies and 
Schmoller belong. See Cohn's Gi'undlegung der National- 
dkono77iie (Stuttgart, 1885), pp. 69-78 and 356-394; also an 
article entitled, "Wagner on the Present State of Political 
Economy," in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oct., 
1886. 



84 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

plication is that the good depending upon us 
for its realization can be realized, that it is 
within the reach of our powers. A something 
that should be, that intrinsically deserved to be, 
and that was beyond our reach, would be the 
ideal, the good all the same, but not the ideal that 
is ethical. We are not bound to accomplish 
what we can not accomplish. An attempt is 
sometimes made to derive the fact of man^s 
power or freedom from the obligation he is un- 
der. Because we ought to do a thing, it is in- 
ferred that we can do it. And no one can fail 
to be impressed and deeply stirred by the Kan- 
tian dictum, ^'Du kannst, denn dusollst. " More- 
over, we may admit that what w^e really ought to 
do, we can do. But the question is whether w^e 
can determine what we really ought to do with- 
out taking into account the extent of our powers. 
Suppose that a better order of nature, a better 
universe, were possible (as some have been 
bold enough to think) ; if this were so, such a 
better order ought to be, yet as we have not 
had a hand in making nature and are powerless 
to change the weight of a single element or to 
affect the most insignificant law, we could hardly 
be under an obligation to make the better order 
real — this, though the order of human society, 
as being in a measure our creation and under 
our control, we ma}^ be bound to change and 



WAAT DO WE MEAN BY DUTY? 85 

improve to an indefinable extent. Or suppose 
that there were great suffering among the inhab- 
itants of one of the heavenly bodies; if there 
were literally no way of relieving that suffering, 
we should not have any duty, strictly speaking, 
toward it — and no more toward suffering in any 
absolutely inaccessible region on the earth. This 
is perfectly consistent with the assertion that 
unmerited distress ought not to be either on this 
planet or on any other, and that it is our duty, 
if there is any possible way of affecting it, to reme- 
dy or prevent it. So if there are any irreclaim- 
ably wicked persons (in this world or another) 
we should be under no obligation to make efforts 
in their behalf — though we are not, perhaps, at 
liberty to suppose that any such persons exist. 
Again, it is sometimes held that while we may 
make others happy we cannot make them vir- 
tuous, virtue being a direction of their own 
will and incommunicable : if this were true (I 
do not say it is) there would be no obligation 
for us to seek to make others moral or virtuous 
and we should be content with seeking to 
make them happy. Indeed, it is commonly 
recognized that we need do nothing at all for 
others, if we are ourselves sick or otherwise 
incapacitated — at least, that obligation does 
not go beyond giving them no unnecessary 
trouble. And even self-control we do not ex- 



86 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

pect of persons who are so ill that all power 
over themselves is for the time gone. 

It is obvious then that while it is true that 
what we ought to do we can do, this is only 
because in estimating the "ought" we have taken 
account of the "can." In this relation "what 
we ought to do" receives its definition as "what 
ought to be so far as it is in our power of at- 
tainment. " Of course, there are practical dan- 
gers in such an admission, for by having great 
demands made upon us we sometimes get the 
power to meet them, and it may be practicall}^ 
impossible to estimate (i. e., to assign any fixed 
limits to) human powers in advance ; yet what- 
ever practical and pedagogic value the Kantian 
dictum may have I can not see that it has phil- 
osophical value* — since if there is really any 
limit to human power, obligation can not go 
beyond it. In other words, "Dickannst^denn dii 
soils f is not an instance of. real inference ; 
and "what ought to be" and "what can or may 
be" can be identified only on a basis of faith. 
Ethics here touches on the borders of another 
Discipline (whatever name we give it) — that, 
namely, which determines the conditions of the 
possible. Ethics is generically distinct from all 

*" Believe that you can do the task and you can do it" — 
this is inspiring in the same way as the Kantian formula is; 
but no one would press it to philosophical uses (i. e. , take 
it as exact truth). 



WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DUTY? 8/ 

the positive (experimental) sciences, but i t is 
determined in part, i. e., its scope is fixed, by 
that science or discipline which fixes or ascer- 
tains the conditions of the possible (i. e., meta- 
physics or theology). And beside these three, 
viz., What is, What should or ought to be, and 
What may or might be, what other categories 
of the mind are there of the same generality? 

It ought to go without saying that when we 
speak of what should be as the subject matter 
of ethics (under the limitations already stated) 
we mean what really should be. For collo- 
quially we say that many things should be, 
when we only mean that they are necessary to 
certain ends which we or others happen to have 
at heart. For example, if I wish to go to a cer- 
tain town I may be properly told I ought to 
take a certain road (which is the shortest and 
best road); but there is no obligation for me 
to take the road irrespective of such a matter- 
of-fact intention. If I wish to damage a cer- 
tain person's reputation, it may be said that I 
ought to proceed in a certain way. If I wish 
to rob my neighbor's house, I ought to have 
such and such tools. If I mean to work all night, 
I ought to take a strong cup of tea at supper. 
Such uses of the word "ought" are perfectly 
legitimate; and yet none of them implies or is 
imagined to imply obligation, pure and simple. 



88 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

They all mean obligation, if I have such and 
such ends in view; but not obligation. It ma}^ 
be that in the real sense of the word "ought," 
I ought not to do one of the things I have just 
imagined myself saying or conceding that I 
ought to do. In other words, ethics deals with 
what I ought to do, not with what I ought to do, 
supposing I wish to realize certain e?ids. If the 
latter were its character, and I ceased to care 
for those ends, obligation would cease, and the 
subject matter of ethics would absolutely pass 
awa}^ 

Here is the defect of all ethical systems 
which find their basis in some matter-of-fact 
instinct or desire of the mind. They assume 
to account for obligation by saying that it cov- 
ers those things which we must do if we wish to 
live, or wish to be happy or to make others hap- 
py. And most of us, of course, do wish to live ; 
but if by chance we cease to wish to (and not 
a few of the race have had this experience) the 
rules that were so binding upon us become en- 
tirely obsolete, the practical problem being now 
to learn the best possible methods (all things 
considered) for putting an end to life. The 
rules thus arising would have for us the same 
dignity and authority that the opposite rules 
once had — if obligation only means what we 
must do to attain any ends on which we happen 



WHAT DO WE MEAN BY DUTY? 89 

to be intent. So with the wish to be 

happy, psychologically more necessary to us, 
perhaps, than the wish to live ; it may be that 
we cannot get rid of this wish (so long as we 
live)— yet if happiness is in and of itself the 
end, any number of rules, and of contradictory 
rules, may become obligatory for various per- 
sons. Selfish courses of conduct may become 
obligatory for one person, unselfish courses for 
another, according as the egoistic or altruistic 
instincts predominate ; even brutal oppression 
and life-long self-indulgence may become a 
duty.* The wish to make others happy is a 

comparatively fragile part of our psychologi- 
cal constitution ; so that to make obligation de- 
pendent upon it is to say that there is only ac- 
cidentally such a thing as obligation. 

It is tolerably plain, then, that if ethics 
deals with any solid subject m.atter at all, there 
must be an obligation independent of our mat- 
ter-of-fact wishes and purposes. If there is 
anything that should be, it must be because it 
is a rational ideal (or part of one or step to- 
wards one) quite independently of whether it is 
the object of any one's wish, or a means to the 
accomplishment of that wish, or no. If there 



* Compare the unflinching logic of Mr. Hugh O. Pente- 
cost in an article on * ' Selfishness " in The Twentieth Century^ 
April 2, 1891. 



go FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

is anything that should be, it should be all the 
same though one does not wish it or wishes 
contrary to it. And in saying this I am sim- 
ply defining the idea of real obligation, without 
saying whether there is anything to correspond 
to the idea or not; I am marking out the pro- 
vince of ethics, without deciding whether any 
concrete body of doctrine can be found which 
will fill it out. We know what a straight line 
is, whether such a thing can exist in nature or 
not; so we can have a clear idea of the essen- 
tial meaning of saying that a thing should be, 
and may leave it to future investigation to find 
out what definitely the thing is (or even wheth- 
er there is any such thing.) We can only say 
now, if there is anything that should be, it 
should be quite irrespective of the wishes of 
the person or persons concerned. 



CHAPTER II 

THE RATIONAL BASIS OF THE IDEA OF DUTY 

Before taking up the question, What (spe- 
cifically) is it that should be, I wish to dwell 
on the objective nature of ethical judgments, 
at which I have already hinted. To say, I wish 
to do a thing, and again, I ought to do a thing, 
are generally distinct propositions. A dozen 
wishes do not, ipso facto, make one ought. The 
wishes even of a universe or of God do not as 
wishes make duty for me (save in the subordi- 
nate sense in which I should try, other things 
being equal, not to make others unhappy). 
Wishes are simply wishes, subjective, that is, 
and can not of themselves give rise to any ob- 
jective proposition. Another element in our 
nature must act to make an objective affirma- 
tion possible. This is reason or intelligence. 

Wishes or cravings report how we are; it is 
reason or intelligence that reports the truth of 
things. What should be (if there is any valid- 
ity in the judgment at all), is an assertion of 

91 



92 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

intelligence, though it be of intelligence in 
quite a different exercise from that the fruit of 
which is science (as I at first " explained). I 
mean that when, in speaking of an object, we 
say what it should be, we pronounce a judg- 
ment, which, if it be true at all, is as valid, as 
much pertains to the object and lays hold of its 
real essence, as the most accurate scientific de- 
scription of what it is. It is not what we should 
like the object to be, but what it should be — 
a genuinely objective judgment; it is not our- 
selves imposing ourselves upon the object and 
fashioning it as we may happen to fancy, it is 
discovering what really belongs to the object, 
what it would be or do were it fully itself. The 
object is as it is irrespective of our wishes — 
and sometimes most stubbornly so ; what the 
object should be — why may not this be equally 
irrespective of our wishes? At least may^ we 
not familiarize ourselves with such a concep- 
tion? Can we not accustom ourselves to look- 
ing upon our fellow-men, upon ourselves, as 
made up of two parts, the actual and the ideal, 
neither of which we create though both we dis- 
cover? — the ideal, indeed, being perhaps the 
more normal part of the two. 

I recognize the difficulty of the conception ; 
and I suppose that with most of us it seems 
easier to recognize the man as he actually is 



NATIONAL BASIS OF DUTY 93 

on the one side, and to put the ideal in our- 
selves contemplating him. But if it is merely 
in us and has no real relation to him, how have 
we a right to impose it upon him, and say he 
ought to do so and so? Others will lodge the 
ideal in the Divine mind instead of ours; and 
since the Creator is differently related to his 
work from the wa)^ in which we are related to 
one another, this is a far less violent way of 
conceiving of the matter. According to such 
a view, what we call the ideal for a man would 
be the Divine design respecting him, the pur- 
pose for which he was created and toward which 
he may be moving or from which he may be 
departing (being at any rate more or less differ- 
ent from his actual present self). I will not deny 
that this may be the only satisfactory way of 
conceiving how what is ideal to us and to the 
person concerned may yet be a real part of his 
nature — real, that is, in the sense of really be- 
longing to him and not being fancifully imposed 
upon him. 

And yet we must distinguish between such a 
way of making the fact picturable or intelli- 
gible to our minds and the fact itself. The 
fact — namely, of a should or ought to be, irre- 
spective of our actual conduct or desires — may 
be indisputable. But a difference of opinion is 
possible as to the way in which it shall be con- 



94 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

ceived. We may even be tolerably sure that the 
fact is only intelligible on the basis of the the- 
istic theory I have just mentioned and yet be 
less sure of this than of the fact itself. In other 
words, we do not derive obligation from a Di- 
vine mind in such a sense that if we were un- 
certain about the existence of a Divine mind 
we should be compelled to doubt the reality of 
obligation ; but we start with obligation as an 
immediate fact, and the hypothesis of a Divine 
mind is one way (perhaps the only wa}^) of mak- 
ing the fact intelligible to us. In a similar 
way it is difficult to conceive how obligation 
may apply to a person when he is unconscious 
of it ; and we may help ourselves out by pic- 
turing the obligation as being a conscious part 
of the mind of his Creator. But the essential 
fact has to be admitted (if we recognize ethical 
obligation at all), even if we do not credit the 
theistic h3^pothesis. For if obligation arises in 
view of certain objective conditions (as already 
explained), the simple fact that one is not aware 
of it no more affects its reality than ignorance 
of what is at the centre of the earth affects the 
nature of what is really discoverable there. We 
discover obligation and do not create it by 
thinking of it, any more than we do the sensi- 
ble world. 

In other words^ obligation must be distin- 



RATIONAL BASIS OF DUTY 95 

guished from the sense of obligation. Obliga- 
tion arises from the nature of anything that 
should be; it but expresses its relation to any 
being who can perceive it and turn it into real- 
ity. The sense or feeling of obligation, on the 
other hand, is more or less of an accident in 
one's psychological development; it may be 
strong or it may be feeble; it ma}^ come early 
or it may come late, or it may, perchance, not 
come at all.''' To take an instance, let us sup- 
pose that temperance in eating and drinking is 
what should be in the case of a human being. 
A person may be conceived who does not know 
that this is the ideal, who has no sense of it 
and no shame in violating it ; all the same, the 
conditions of life being what they are, we should 
say that temperance was the ideal for him, that 
obligation essentially inhered in it, that he 
ought to become aware of it and acquire the 
sense of obligation towards it, and we should 
only be sorry for him that he never had. 

One thing is, of course, necessary that obli- 
gation may apply to a person, namely that he 
should be able to feel it, that the obstacles to 
his doing so should lie in his circumstances or 
education, not in his nature. This is but say- 
ing that obligation being a fact that has no 

* Ethics proper has thus only indirectly anything to do 
with pyschological or sociological theories of the origin of 
the "moral sense" or conscience. 



96 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

meaning save in relation to intelligence, applies 
only to rational beings and not to stocks and 
stones. But granted a being essentially ration- 
al, the mere fact that he has not happened to 
have his mind turned in the direction of ideal 
good does not interfere with the authoritative 
relation of that good to him — and such author- 
itative relation is the essence of obligation. It 
may be that an obligation that is not felt is 
something difficult for us to distinctly conceive, 
and perhaps our only help is in regarding it as 
the demand of a Divine mind, but the fact is 
separable from the theory and has to be admit- 
ted, if Ethics is conceded to have any solid 
subject-matter at all. 

In still another way the rational origin of our 
ethical judgments may be brought home to us. 
All our wishes or desires (whatever their char- 
acter) are directed to essential ideal objects; 
since what we have already we do not wish 
for. How are then wished-for objects in gen- 
eral different from those with which Ethics 
deals? According to some, there is no line of 
demarcation ; what should be is simply what 
we wish to have be. Ethics becomes thus purely 
subjective, and apart from our matter-of-fact 
desires would have no existence. But most 
persons would say that Ethics deals with what 
is desirable — rather than with what is simply 



RATIONAL BASIS OF DUTY 97 

desired, and the question is, how is a judgment 
as to what is desirable possible? There is 
plainly a line of distinction between the two 
things. It is an instance of the way in which 
subtle and searching thinkers may occasionally 
lapse from habits of accuracy, that John Stuart 
Mill in his Utilitarianism ignores the distinc- 
tion and gravely argues that happiness is de- 
sirable for the simple reason that people desire 
it, just as objects are proved to be visible be- 
cause people see them or sounds audible be- 
cause people hear them."^ It is indeed thus 
proved that happiness can be desired ; but every 
one knows that in pronouncing an object to be 
desirable, we mean more than this. We really 
mean, do we not? — and let every reader answer 
for himself — that the object is worthy of being 
desired, that even if we should not actually 
desire it, it would none the less deserve to be 
desired. f 

Now how can we go beyond the bare fact 
that a thing is desired or can be desired and 
say that it is worthy of being desired? Evi- 
dently only by a process of judgment, by an 

^Chap. 4. 

f The fact that "desirable" and "visible" and "audible" 
have similar verbal terminations is apparently what misleads. 
But no one imagines for a moment that "audible sounds" 
means sounds that are worth hearing or ''visible objects " 
objects that one ought to see. 
7 



g8 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

act of reason. Desirable Is, indeed, practically 
synonymous with rational. To say that an ob- 
ject is desirable and that it is rationally to be 
desired is the same thing. If then Ethics deals 
with the desirable rather than the desired, it is 
just by means of reason that it acquires its dis- 
tinctive character. In truth, by simply adding 
the predicate "desirable ' to that of "desired" 
(in speaking of any object) we pass, however 
dimly we may be aware of it, from one region 
of the mind to another, from the realm of mat- 
ter-of-fact to that of speculation, from the do- 
main of Psychology to that of Ethics. What 
is desirable may be the same as what is desired, 
so far as its content or subject-matter goes; we 
may be rationally convinced that what most 
men actually desire (i. e., their happiness) is 
the desirable thing — or if we conclude that per- 
fection or self-realization is the truly desirable 
thing there may yet be those, who rise to the 
point of actually desiring it ; it is in form, not 
necessarily in content, that the two judgments 
differ. Reason's office may be not in originating 
anything, but in simply deciding whichone of the 
many things that are or may be desired is worthy 
to be desired. Its whole function may be to 
thus affix a certain stamp or give a certain form 
to material which comes to it from elsewhere.* 



* So living objects in nature are distinguished from non- 



RATIONAL BASIS OF DUTY QQ 

However this may be. it is what reason pro- 
nounces desirable (and which for most of us 
imperfect human beings is more or less differ- 
ent from what is actually desired) that Ethics has 
to do with. In the earlier portion of this dis- 
cussion "desirable" was occasionally used a 
synonym for the "ideal" or the "good" or "what 
ought to be or should be;" these are all to my 
mind equivalent expressions; and I trust it is 
now clear how this is so. All are in intention 
objective conceptions or judgments. All spring 
from the rational part of our nature, and herein 
lies the distinction between the fancifully and 
the truly ideal. Ethics in its distinctive char- 
acter has entirely a rational basis; and if any 
conception is inadequate or false or any judg- 
ment mistaken (as many may be) the error is 
to be corrected not by falling back on our mat- 
ter-of-fact desires or instincts but by the use of 
more and more searching reason, by more thor- 
ough exploration of the ideal field and more 
careful determination (by speculative methods) 
of what the true ideal is. 

I^am aware that all speculative efforts of the 

living objects, not because they are anywise different so far 
as their constituent elements are concerned, but because 
these elements are combined or arranged in a certain man- 
ner, i.e. , because of a certain form given to them. It is form, 
too, and form alone that marks a work of art; the materials 
of a daub and of a beautiful picture may be exactly the 
same. 



lOO FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

inind are attended with more or less risk and 
uncertainty. Very different are they from efforts 
to analyze the data of our experience, however 
difficult such analysis maybe. The only thing 
to remember is that we have to speculate, if 
we are to have a rule for our conduct at all, that 
in one sense life itself rests on speculation, 
since it is alwa37s directed to ends not yet real- 
ized — so that the practical question is hardly 
whether we shall speculate or no, but whether 
we shall speculate wisety, comprehensively, 
consistently and v/elL 



CHAPTER III 

THE REALIZATION OF THE NATURE OF EACH BEING 
AS THE END TO BE STRIVEN FOR 

The results of the preceding chapters may 
be briefly summed up as follows: Ethics deals 
with what should or ought to be so far as it 
depends upon us for its realization and so far 
as we can realize it, (by "we" meaning rational 
beings in general) ; it is thus marked off from 
all science in the positive or experimental sense 
of the term, i. e., from all those disciplines that 
investigate the actual (whether past, present or 
to come), from the physical sciences, from biol- 
ogy, from sociology, from psychology, from his- 
tory, and from politics and political economy 
(so far as they are investigations of history 
and fact) ; if it is to be called a science (in the 
sense of an accurate and systematic body of 
thought) it is yet a speculative science; on the 
other hand it is not fundamentally distinct from 
aesthetics, from logic or from politics and po- 
litical economy (considered as speculative stu- 

lOI 



I02 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

dies), but whatever should be, in whatever 
realm, is really its subject-matter, so far, that 
is, as it is possible for us to realize it and as it 
is not already realized or on the way to be real- 
ized by other hands 3 at the same time this 
"should be" is what really should be and not 
simply what should be ^something else hap- 
pens to be desired; in other words, it is an ob- 
jective judgment and is true whether the person 
to whom it applies has a sense of its truth or 
not; and as such, it is mediated by reason 
and the result of a process of speculation. 

The question must now be taken up. What 
should be? For all that has been done thus 
far has been to sketch the general idea of Eth- 
ics ; it yet remains to be seen whether anything 
can be found to correspond to the idea. A per- 
son might concede that Ethics deals with what 
should be in contradistinction to what is, and 
yet question whether it is possible to make an 
excursion into the speculative field and actually 
determine what should be. So one might 
allow that there is a possible psychology of the 
inhabitants of the farthest star and might go 
so far as to give to it a special name ; and yet 
question whether the name and the idea could 
ever stand for anything actual. 

How can we speculate at all? it may be asked. 
How can we leave the ground under our feet? 



REALIZATION OF A BEING'S NATURE 103 

How can we gain so much as a notion of what 
is not matter-of-fact, unless it be a delusive 
notion? And even if we think we can leave 
the terra firma of experience, what possible 
guidance is there for us in the airy regions of 
speculation? What warrant can we have as to 
the truth of any ideas we may form there? 

It is a simple and sufficient answer to the 
first set of questions to say, that human beings 
do speculate, that whether we can tell how it 
is possible or not, they are thinking almost 
every day of their lives beyond the boundaries 
of their experience, sometimes forming notions 
of what should be that are most sharply anti- 
thetical to what actually happens; and the psy- 
chologist has no great difficulty in explaining 
how this is done. As to the second set of ques- 
tions it is not so easy to give an immediate an- 
swer. It must be confessed that guidance is 
only to be found in our own minds, — i. e., in 
the ideal laws of the mind. We must see to it 
that we are accurate, scrupulous and thorough 
in our thinking and that our thoughts do not, 
either directly or when traced to their conse- 
quences, contradict one another; and certainly 
if we should simply get rid of confused and self- 
contradictory thinking in this department, some- 
thing would be gained. Yet this, one must ad- 
mit, is formal rather than real guidance ; and it 



I04 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

cannot be denied that different notions of what 
should be may be possible, each notion consist- 
ent with itself and internally complete, so that 
as between them it would be beyond our power 
to decide which was true. If there were a re- 
velation from an Absolute Mind, in v/hich the 
world and the whole system of things originated, 
this would certainly settle the matter ; but such 
a revelation does not seem to be forthcoming, 
the revelations that we are supposed to have 
quite failing or rather not pretending to cover 
this point.* We have only then to do the best 
we can within the range of actual possibilities 
— that is, to develop the various views that 
may be held, to see whether they cover the 
ground and are internally consistent. It is 
barely possible, of course, that only one view 
can be worked out into systematic complete- 
ness, or, at least, that some one view might 
be elaborated which would practically include 
all the others (i. e., all of positive import in 
them) ; in this case, such a view would have 
all the marks of truth we could ask for. In this 
general spirit I submit the following view, and 
I am perhaps as anxious as any one to find out 
whether it can be developed and stated in an 
intelligible and consistent manner. 

* There are many ethical commands in the Jewish and 
Christian "revelations," but there is no attempt at a rea- 
soned doctrine of the ultimate good. 



REALIZATION OF A BEING S NATURE IO5 

It is plain, in the first place, that we have to 
conceive what should be conformably to the 
nature of each particular thing or being. By 
what should be, I do not mean an abstraction, 
but what this, that or the other thing or being 
should be; and it is conceivable that while a 
plant should be one thing, an animal should be 
another and a human being quite another. My 
view in essence is as follows : What should be 
is the realization of the nature of each partic- 
ular thing or being. It is true that I may thus 
seem to fall back upon what is matter-of-fact ; 
and in one sense I do — but not in a sense in- 
consistent with what I have before said. For 
I do not mean that a being should be what it 
is, that it should seek what it does seek (in 
which case Ethics would be a superfluity), but 
that a being should seek the realization of all 
its capacities, and thus, perhaps, become some- 
thing quite different from what it is. The na- 
ture of some beings does not realize itself spon- 
taneously (where this does take place Ethics 
has no application) ; it may happen that some 
beings never manifest their capacities or even 
find them out ; in a word, such self-realization 
is a truly ideal end. 

The objection occurs at once that if the real- 
ization of one's nature is what should be and 
one's nature is bad, then the realization of what 



Io6 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

is bad becomes what should be. By bad in this 
case is probably meant what is injurious — inju- 
rious to another or to one's self. But it must 
be remembered that if what should be is the reali- 
zation of the nature not of one being, but of 
each being, if the general aim and law of con- 
duct is derivable therefrom, then action by one 
which hinders or renders impossibile the reali- 
zation of the nature of another is wrong — and 
quite as truly action which results in a similar 
harm to one's self. We are thus compelled to 
define more closely what we have in mind in 
speaking of the nature of a being: we mean 
those possibilities the realization of which 
does not involve injury to itself or harm to 
other beings. 

But it may be asked, Are not we human beings 
continually injuring and destroying not only 
one another (which may be indefensible) but 
animal and vegetable existence as well? We 
may, of course, be doing so and yet not have 
the right to ; the question really is. Have we a 
right to? If what should be is unqualifiedly 
as I have stated it, if it is the realization of 
the nature of each particular thing without limi- 
tation, then we have a right to realize our own 
nature only in so far as we do not thereby inter- 
fere with the realization of the nature of any- 
thing else. According to such a view men and 



REALIZATION OF A BEING'S NATURE I07 

animals must live, so far as they can live, with- 
out doing harm to one another. Even vegeta- 
ble existence would have to be included in this 
treaty of peace. The result of the practical 
adoption of such a view (in the world in which 
we human beings now live) would probably be, 
that few or no human beings would continue 
to exist; yes, that few or no animals (if they 
could act on the view) would survive, since they 
derive their sustenance in great measure by 
destroying vegetable life. It is true that such 
a tracing of consequences does not dispose of 
the ethics of the question. It might be better 
that there should be no animal or human life 
than that it should maintain itself by violating 
ethical requirements — a position similar to that 
which bold spirits have taken, in affirming that 
in case social order among men is only possi- 
ble (as some have thought^ on a basis of pov- 
erty and misery among the many, it would be 
better that social order should perish.* 

The ethics of the question can only be set- 
tled by disinterestedly asking ourselves. Do all 
forms of life stand on an equal plane? Is the 
animaPs existence as much to be respected as 
human existence and is vegetable life equally 
sacred with animal life? It is not enough to 

* Compare the language of Channing, Works (A. U. A. 
edition), p. 32. 



Io8 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

say we want to live and are bound to live (at 
whatever cost) — the question is, how far is such 
an instinct and determination morally legiti- 
mate? The animal, if it had a voice, might say 
the same; and in that case there would result 
simply a brutal trial of strength, as brutal on 
the man's part as the beast's. It is evident 
that an answer to the question can only be had 
by going back to the fundamental inquiry, What 
is it that gives worth to anything? Now the 
only answer I can give to this deeper inquiry 
is that the worth of a thing depends upon the 
extent of its being, upon the range of its possi- 
bilities. According as a thing has a wider or 
narrower range of possibilities, it ranks higher or 
lov/er in the scale of being. This gives an object- 
ive meaning to worth ; it is not fixed by what we 
happen to like or fancy or admire, but depends 
upon an actually larger or narrower range of pos- 
sibilities. The atom, for example (if the concep- 
tion of popular science is true), is a thing of ab- 
solutely limited capacities; it may enter into 
combination with other atoms and become an 
unconscious part of a larger whole, but in itself 
it is simply what it is and always has been 
and always will be. Thus destitute of poten- 
tiality it ranks far below the least living 
seed, which may become in time a form of 
beauty, with leaf and blossom. So any plant 



REALIZATION OF A BEING^S NATURE IO9 

or tree, if (as is commonly supposed) it has no 
sensations, does not stand as high in the scale 
of being as the lowest form of animal life that 
knows what pleasure is. In the same way, if 
the animal creation, however it may shade off 
into the human species, is yet broadly distin- 
guished from it, by having a narrower range of 
wants and ideals, more limited possibilities of 
intelligence, perhaps no properly moral life, 
and by being in general less educable (i. e., 
less capable of progress), then the tribe of an= 
imals ranks lower in the scale than man. Hence 
if only a certain amount of life is possible on 
this planet we cannot be in doubt as to which 
type ought to be sacrificed as possessing the 
lesser worth— and this as a purely objective 
and disinterested judgment, quite apart from 
our own instincts and cravings in the mat- 
ter. 

The Buddhist religion saj^s, indeed, that we 
should not take animal life; and it is interest- 
ing to note that this religion, i. e., its ethics, 
rests entirely on a hedonistic basis — it treats 
happiness or pleasure as the end of life. The 
two things are closely connected. For in re- 
spect to capacities for pleasure simply, animals 
and humankind are substantially on the same 
plane : pleasure is pleasure whoever feels it — 
•'and if the supreme duty is to add to the sum 



1 10 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

of pleasure and to avoid the infliction of pain 
in the world, then it is as wrong to injure and 
destroy animal life as human life. It is not 
in the capacity of pleasure, but in the capaci- 
ties of reason and conscience and self-gov- 
ernment that humankind is different from the 
animal world. At the same time the rightful- 
ness of taking animal life is conditioned upon 
its necessity ; the wanton destruction of such 
life, i. e., for mere pleasure or sport,' is con- 
demned by the principle under discussion; and 
the ideal order would seem to be one in which 
each thing or being could realize its own na- 
ture and live out its own life unhindered by 
other things or beings about it — an order an- 
ticipated by a prophet of Israel when he said, 
"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the 
leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the 
calf and the young lion and the fatling together ; 
and a little child shall lead them."* It is the 
accidents of our earthly situation that prevent 
this ideal from being realizable and that make 
legitimate for us what under other circum- 
stances would be wrong. To sum up : What 
should or ought to be in the case of any partic- 
ular thing or being is the realization of its par- 
ticular nature or possibilities; but particular 
things or beings have different grades of worth 

*Isaiah. XL 6. • 



kEALIZATION OF A BEING^S NATURE III 



or dignity j and if it so happens that all can not 
equally live and grow (i. e., if we are compelled 
to choose and select which shall live and which 
shall perish), it is right that the lower beings 
should be sacrificed for the higher. 

I am aware that the question arises, Would 
not the same logic justify the destruction of 
inferior races of the human species by other 
races more advanced? Evidently all depends 
upon whether the different members of the hu- 
man family have a common nature, i.e., whe- 
ther they are properly speaking one family. If 
the ordinary conception is correct, namely that 
they are, then is the stamping out of an inferior 
race by a superior one iniquitous. Nor is this 
hitherto prevalent conception (prevalent at 
least among Christian peoples) so easily under- 
mined as some would appear to think. For it 
does not mean that races are actually alike, 
that they do not stand on different levels of 
culture, that they do not vary in moral and in- 
tellectual as well as in physical attainments, 
that some tribes do not seem to be actually 
much nearer the animal kingdom than to the 
company of civilized peoples ; it simply means 
that the potentialities of all are essentially the 
same, that all are called by tl^ieir inherent na- 
ture to substantially the same great ends. 
Yet, on the other hand, if it could be shown 



112 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

that any race or tribe is incapable of advance, 
that, for example, it is not only actually desti- 
tute of morality, art and science, but is unsus- 
ceptible to their influence and cannot acquire 
them, then though such a race might be called 
human, and though its members might have 
the human form and smooth skins and stand 
upright like the rest of us, it would not have 
the claims upon our respect which human 
beings proper have, and might, if the world 
were not large enough for them and ourselves, 
be sacrificed j in a word, they would be practi- 
cally animals to us, or perhaps, a connecting 
link between animals and men — at any rate, not 
sharers of the same nature with ourselves. The 
question would be one of fact, and it might be; 
most difficult in a special case to determine what 
the fact was ; at least it would be perilous to de- 
cide that a given race was not human. 

And if we deal with the matter practically, 
i. e., as it relates to the conduct in the present 
or past of civilized peoples toward most so- 
called inferior races, it is indisputable that these 
races were or are human and that the conduct 
of civilized peoples toward them has been eth- 
ically criminal. Our own treatment of the In- 
dians is a glaring instance. The progess of civi- 
lization, the evolution of ever higher and higher 
types of society are a part of what should be, 



REALIZATION OF A BEING'S NATURE II3 

for they mean the progressive realization of the 
nature of man ; but they dare not be bought, 
and cannot really be attained, by a violation of 
the fundamental law that all who have a com- 
mon nature should be alike reverenced. Anglo- 
Saxon civilization, so far as it has not observed 
this law, is itself tainted, unwholesome, one- 
sided and destined to be superseded, as many 
indeed are beginning to suspect. 

Let us now return to test a little more closely 
the idea of the nature or possibilities of a being. 
Is it not after all, it may be asked, too vague to 
serve for the purposes of scientific discussion? 
Are there not possibilities of all sorts as a part 
of our nature, possibilities of ignorance as well 
as of knowledge, of failure as well as of achiev- 
ment, of going wrong as well as of going right, 
of unhappiness as well as of happiness? Such 
an objection, however, fails to take into ac- 
count what I really mean by "possibilities ;" and 
this it is now necessary to more precisely set 
forth. By possibilities I do not mean whatever 
we might be or do, but the positive capacities 
or capabilities of our nature. It is hardly pro- 
per to speak of ourselves as having a capacity 
for ignorance ; what we have a capacity for is 
knowledge ; ignorance is simply what happens 
when this capacity is not brought into play. 
Would it not be absurd to speak of the capac- 

8 



114 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

ity of a bird foi* not flying? Its capacity is 
for flying, though it is, of course, possible that 
it should not fly. So there is no capacity for 
failure: it is a misuse of language to speak in 
this way. In other words, capacities (or such 
possibilities as I have in mind in speaking of 
the nature of a thing) are positive: they are 
the germs or seeds of some attainment, the pro- 
mise and potency of something ; while all igno- 
rance and failure and defect simply signify that 
something has not been attained ; they partake 
so far of the nature of nothing. 

But, it may be said, is not pain a positive 
thing? Is not wrong-doing as much as right- 
doing, sin as much as virtue an appreciable 
something? I will not argue for the notion, as 
is sometimes done (though with other motives) 
that pain and sin are negative rather than posi- 
tive in their nature. I think as much might be 
said for the idea that pleasure is simply the ab- 
sence of pain, though I do not hold that this is 
true either. I admit that pain is a positive 
reality, a something that can not be described 
by negative terms. Hence if what should be 
is the realization of our capacities simply, it 
would seem as if pain ought to be desired 
equally with pleasure, a conclusion which is 
monstrous. The temptation is great at this 
point to say that what should be is simply 



REALIZATION OF A BEING'S NATURE II5 

pleasure and the realization of other capacities 
of our nature so far as they are instruments of 
pleasure. I offer, however, the following con- 
siderations. 

The realization of the capacities of our 
nature is what I have proposed as the good 
or desirable (speaking now of human beings). 
If then there is anything which hinders such 
a realization, it would be so far an evil; it 
should be deemed and treated as undesira- 
ble. Now pain is a something which is 
admitted to be (as a rule) not only subjectively 
unwelcome and repellent, but objectively, and 
quite apart from our feelings in the matter, 
devitalizing, harmful ; sometimes it is even de- 
structive — for it is said that beings may die of 
pain. Now to whatever extent it does thus 
tend to lower our vital power (our power of 
thought and affection and volition included,) to 
put a check on the development of our natures, 
why may we not say, it is what should not be 
— not simply because we do not like it, but 
because of these its effects? On the other hand 
so far as pain does not have this effect, so far 
as it is a means to, or an incident in, the ac- 
complishment of what is actually desirable (as 
in some cases we can see that it is), may we 
not reckon it as a part of what should be? I 
am not sure whether this really meets the diffi- 



Il6 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

culty or not; but it seems to me that it does. 
The fuller definition of what should be would 
accordingly be as follows : The realization of 
the capacities of our nature so far as they are 
consistent with one another and can go to make 
up a whole. I am not sure that this qualifica- 
tion is not implied in the very idea of the real- 
ization of the capacities of our nature; and it 
is in any case parallel with the definition already 
given of what should be as between different 
beings, which was the realization of the nature 
of each so far as it is compatible with a simi- 
lar realization for the rest. 

What rational account, then, can be given 
of pain? How happens the capacity for it to 
belong to our nature — a capacity that must to 
some extent be thwarted that our nature as a 
whole may realize itself? But may not one ask 
whether the capacity for pain is really a capac- 
ity for itself? Is it not rather the obverse 
side of the capacity for pleasure? That is, in 
the capacity for pleasure, must there not al- 
ways be the possibility of pain? — fully admit- 
ting that pain is not the mere absence of pleas- 
ure. Pleasure results from certain acts (acts on 
the whole that tend to the preservation of life) ; 
but if we do not perform these acts, or do con- 
trariwise, we may have pain. It is better on 
the whole to have some pain than to be with- 



REALIZATION OF A BEING'S NATURE II7 

out the capacity for pleasure ; and pain may 
be our teacher, is so in some obvious ways. 
Hence whether we regard it as an incident in the 
life of beings who have the capacity for pleas- 
ure or as a means of warning, we may see that 
pain has a place in the economy of our nature, 
without regarding it as a part of what unqual- 
ifiedly should be and without regarding our li = 
ability to it as a positive capacity of our nature 
as is our capacity for pleasure, for knowledge 
or for aesthetic judgment and appreciation. 

As to sin or immoral action — that, too, is a 
positive thing. Yet would it not be straining 
language to say that we have a distinct capa- 
city for immoral action? We may act immor- 
ally, but it is in virtue of the same capacity 
by which we do what is right and good. To 
speak briefly, we have the power to act in ac- 
cordance with what we rationally pronounce 
good or desirable; but in this power to act in 
one way (in a way that ennobles us) is of necess- 
ity contained the power to act in another way 
(a way that debases us) ; yet when we act in op- 
position to what reason pronounces good, we 
sin. It is on the whole better that we should 
sin than that we should not have the power of 
moral action at all ; but the power of moral 
action is plainly the positive capacity in us and 
sin is but the misuse and perversion of that 



H8 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

power. Without at all regarding sin, then, in 
a merely negative light, we are not obliged to 
say (and, strictly speaking, the language has 
no meaning) that we have a capacity for sin. 
We are liable to sin, we have a capacity for 
goodness.* In view of these considerations, 
I do not feel obliged to abandon the view I 
have proposed. 

A question of practical moment does how- 
ever arise in this connection. Speaking now of 
ourselves (i. e., of human beings as distinct 
from other existence) do our capacities all stand 
on the same level with one another, or is there 
a gradation of rank among them? We have 
said that human beings were of more worth 
than animal and vegetable types of existence 
because of the greater range of their possibili- 
ties. Is there any distinction of worth among 
these possibilities themselves? Is the capacity 
for pleasure on the same plane as that for 
knowledge and rational thinking? Are there 
grades in the rank of pleasures themselves — 
does the enjoyment of eating and drinking 
stand on a par with that of appreciating a work 
of art or thinking rational thoughts? If not, 
why not? On what principle do we distin- 

*John Henry Newman says, "Evil has no substance of 
its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion or corrup- 
tion of that which has substance." [Idea of a University, p. 
60.) 



REALIZATION OF A BEING'S NATURE II9 

guish? Granted that the harmonious realiza- 
tion of all the capacities of our nature is the 
ideal and that it would be possible in an ideal 
order of things ; suppose it is not possible now, 
to which capacities should we give the prefer- 
ence? And even if it were possible, would 
higher or lower be words without meaning in 
relation to them? I think a distinction does 
arise in the following way : 

We have the various capacities referred to. 
But they do not of their own accord develop 
themselves harmoniously — this one and that 
one are apt to get a disproportionate or exclu- 
sive development. How then shall the har- 
monious development be secured? Evidently 
by being thought of and striven for. The idea 
(of an harmonious development) must precede 
the result. Now the capacity for such an idea 
we call reason. The rational part of us comes 
then to have a peculiar and pre-eminent impor- 
tance, because it furnishes the principle of order 
for the due development of our nature as a 
whole. The sense of beauty is akin to it, since 
it is fundamentally a kind of appreciation of 
order or harmony; and the sense of beauty is 
properly ranked higher than any merely physi- 
cal sensibility or appetite. The will has also 
a peculiar dignity ; the will as distinct from all 
rnere instinct and appetite is the power of ac- 



I20 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

tion according to ideas ; it is by the will that 
the idea of the total realization of our nature 
is practically carried into effect. This is not 
saying that any instinct, appetite or craving, 
any part of our nature whatsoever, is in itself 
unworthy, that every one should not be realized 
and would not be in an ideal constitution of 
things; but only that some capacities are high- 
er than others, are to be preferred to others, 
if a choice has to be made — "higher" mean- 
ing that which comes nearer to being a first 
principle in our nature; "lower" that which, 
instead of regulating, has to be regulated. Rea- 
son (including the aesthetic sense) and the will 
are first principles in our nature ; our other ca- 
pacities, being in and of themselves blind, re- 
quire to be ruled by them (by the mind ideally, 
by the will effectually). 

The notion, then, that what should or ought 
to be is the realization of the nature of each 
thing or being (in the sense already explained) 
appears to stand the test of criticism. Duty, 
in the broadest and most fundamental sense, 
comes to mean aiming at and striving for the 
realization of the nature of each thing or being 
throughout the world (so far as we can anywise 
aid in the accomplishment of such a result) ; 
in other words, it is co-operation with the 
ideal ends of the universe in general, so far 



REALIZATION OF A BEING's NATURE 121 

as those ends do not realize themselves and 
as it is in our power to assist in their 
realization. Towards mere being, or towards 
what simply is and cannot be otherwise (at- 
oms, for example, or space or time), we have 
no duties; towards processes that accomplish 
themselves we have no duty ; but towards pro- 
cesses that are in the direction of an end that 
may or may not be accomplished, duty does 
exist provided we have power to help. If, for 
example, we could help a tree to a fuller reali- 
zation of its capacities, we should do so ; pro- 
vided, of course, other and prior duties leave 
us time and that such realization would leave 
the tree a part of an harmonious totality of 
nature. So of any sentient being, a horse or a 
dog ; we have only a right to hinder the devel- 
opment of animal existence or to destroy animal 
life if the higher interests of humanity are to 
be positively served thereby. Of course, the 
fact is that the nature of these lower orders of 
being for the most part realizes itself, or at 
least that the realization is accomplished by 
other hands than ours. 

It is in the field of human life particularly 
that duty finds a point and full meaning. Not 
only do we know our own nature better 
than that of animals or trees (being able 
to take an inside view of it), but here we 



122 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

can have an influence that we can not have 
outside ourselves, and here most depends up- 
on our influence. In this field the formula- 
tion of duty becomes, Labor for the realization 
of the capacities of the race in general and of 
the individual men and women with whom you 
are in contact; labor also for the ever fuller 
and fuller realization of your own nature. As 
matter of fact, part of the reason why the ends 
of human existence are so imperfectly realized, 
is that so little attention is turned that way. 
We are led by our instincts; we think simply 
of what we want and not of what should be, 
and hardly rise into the atmosphere of ration- 
ality. When we care for others, we care for 
them one-sidedly — for their comfort or happi- 
ness ; and most of our thought is given to our- 
selves and our surface-selves at that. Hence the 
appropriateness and necessity of ethical think- 
ing and' activity, if what should be is taken 
seriously at all. If we were beings whose ends 
were realized apart from any will of our own, if 
we had to take no thought for our minds or for 
the direction of our wills (as it has been some- 
times supposed we need take no thought for 
our bodies), if ail went on and went right by a 
beautiful necessity of nature, duty would cease 
to have meaning for us; as it is, however, it 
has all the meaning of choosing what should 



REALIZATION OF A BEING's NATURE 1 23 

be as the regulative idea of one's life, of co-op- 
eration with nature, of obedience to what, if 
we are theists, we must call Divine ends. 

What the capacities of our nature are in detail 
I have not sought to specify; much less have I 
attempted to classify them. This would be an 
interesting subject of inquiry; but I have said 
enough to indicate what it is I have in mind — 
and I am much more interested in adding that 
I do not think we can state fully what human 
capacities are in advance. For the formula I 
have given does not refer merely to such ca- 
pacities as we now commonly attribute to hu- 
man nature, but to such as may show them- 
selves in the future evolution of the race as 
well. The ethical aim has this aspect of in- 
determinateness or infinity about it. It is not 
merely directed to this or that good that we 
know, but to all good — and to this or that, in 
so far as it has the charact'eristic marks that 
belong to all. What the complete man w^ould 
be, we may not be able to say beforehand ; 
what a perfect society of human beings would 
be, it may be impossible to picture to ourselves. 
We can only say that the complete man would 
be all that his present or any future capacities 
would make it possible for him to be ; and that 
an ideal society would be a glorified relation- 
ship and communion of such intelligencest 



124 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

And yet it is not difficult to say what would be 
a completer man than any, or at least most of 
those, we now see ; it is not difficult to picture 
to ourselves a more perfect society than any 
which has been thus far produced. The capa- 
cities of human nature ordinarily accredited to 
it are rareh^ developed in any fullness or har- 
mony in even select specimens of the race; 
and there are whole masses of men in whom 
they can hardly be said to be developed at all. 
The scope, the possible compass of our duty, 
we may not be able to define. But present duty 
is easily within the reach of our apprehension 
■ — it is to fill out what vision of greater com- 
pleteness we already have, to round out our 
own humanity and to labor for the humaniza- 
tion of all — of those particularly, I might say, 
who have been almost denied their birthright 
in the past and are only beginning to recogni'ze 
that they have the rights and claims as well as 
the duties of men. To respect our own nature 
as human beings and to give equal respect to 
that of others, in other words, to strive for the 
realization of the capacities of human nature 
wherever it is found, to labor for the fulfillment 
of the ideal destiny of every man — such is to 
my mind the gist of ethics so far as its human 
application is concerned. At the same time it 
should be remembered that wherever there are 



REALIZATION OF A BEING's NATURE 1 25 

ideal ends outside the field of humanity the 
attainment of which we can further, the same 
basis for duty exists. Human beings are, per- 
haps, the only subjects of duty. The lower 
orders of being do not appear to be capable of 
forming a rational idea of what should be, and 
so obligation does not apply to them. There 
are no duties, strictly speaking, for trees and 
animals. But objects of duty they may be, 
and the wide world may be conceived to be, if 
it is moving on to some end or consummation 
which we can help or hinder. In one sense 
indeed we ourselves are the only complete ob- 
jects of our duty; for it is ourselves only, our 
own natures that are really in our power. This 
applies equally to the dealings of human beings 
with one another. Each one can dedicate him- 
self to the realization of his own capacities 
(personal morality), but he cannot in the same 
sense dedicate himself to the realization of the 
capacities of others; w^e can only incite others, 
assist them, take away obstacles from before 
them — ^but they themselves must take the steps. 
This, however, is not denying that we have a 
duty to others, but only defining it. The defi- 
nition of what should be remains what it was; 
and the definition of duty, to labor for the real- 
ization of what should be, so far as it is in our 
power to contribute to that realization, remains 



126 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

also. In subsequent chapters we shall compare 
this view of what should be with other views 
sometimes advanced. 



CHAPTER IV 

OTHER THEORIES OF DUTY — INTUITIONISM 

I wish in these concluding chapters to briefly 
consider other theories of duty than the one I 
have proposed. 

Perfection may be regarded as the end to be 
striven for. But what is to be understood by 
perfection? Does it mean anything else than 
the full realization of a being's capacities? Do 
we attach any other significance to the idea? 
If not, this view resolves itself into the view I 
have already advocated. 

Again it may be held that life is what should 
be coveted. Does this mean length of days, 
duration of existence? But who will hold that 
many days with little in them is preferable to 
fewer days full of thought and activity? If sim- 
ple duration of existence is the most desirable 
thing, then the lot of the "eternal hills" is bet- 
ter than that of living, feeling beings which 
come and go, and the supposably immortal 
atoms are nearer to ideal good than thinking, 

127 



128 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

aspiring and yet mortal man. Or are we to 
understand by life the sum-total of all our pow- 
ers considered as in a state of activity and de 
velopment? If so, and if our spiritual nature 
is taken into account along with the physical, 
this view is resolvable into the one which I 
have proposed — the only difference being that 
I have attempted to state what life and the full- 
ness of life really mean. 

Something similar might be said of progress, 
sometimes proposed as that most worthy to be 
desired. If this means the progressive realiza- 
tion of the capacities of man (and other beings), 
it practically coincides with the conception 
which I have advanced. For progress is more 
than movement ; it is movement toward a goal, 
and the conception is incomplete without some 
notion of the goal. Practically progress is con- 
sistent either with the view I have opposed or 
with other definitions of what is ultimately de- 
sirable. In other words, progress of itself is 
an incomplete idea; it requires supplementing. 

Another view of what should be is that a 
certain state (or states) of the will should be; 
states to which we may collectively give the 
name virtue. By this is meant obedience to 
certain rules; it is held that such obedience is 
a good in itself irrespective of any further ends 
to which it may contribute, and that the rules 



INTUITIONISM 129 

are immediately seen to be binding and require 
no justification. To such a view we may give 
the name of Intuitionism, though I will not 
vouch for the correctness of the appellation and 
I do not wish to be understood as undertaking 
to criticise the special views of any who may 
call themselves Intuitionists.* 

The critical question is, whether rules of 
virtue are really the objects of an immediate 
judgment or whether they look beyond them- 
selves and require ulterior justification. In- 
stances of such rules are veracity, chastity, 
courage, prudence, love, justice. It is not to 
be denied, that what we may call moral com- 
mon-sense — understanding by this the average 
unreflective judgment of most persons in civi- 
lized communities — regards these as self-evi- 

* In one sense, it may be said that all complete ethical 
theories are intuitional; that is, all affirm or presuppose 
some end that is immediately seen to be desirable. Those 
who deny that any action is good in itself and say that every- 
thing must be judged by its tendency to contribute to man's 
welfare or happiness do yet implicitly assert that that welfare 
or happiness is an end to be sought, and since everything 
else is to be judged by it, that it is itself to be judged by noth- 
ing; that is, there is no standard beyond it, which is the same 
assaying that it is immediately seen or judged to be the true 
standard. Utilitarianism, then, (if, as is pretty well agreed, 
this is the name for the happiness-theory of Ethics) is in- 
tuitional in its foundations. So is the view that duration of 
existence is the finally desirable thing; so also the view 
which I have set forth. It must in the nature of the case 
be impossible to infer or deduce any really first principle 
in ethics from another principle, for, in this case, it would 
9 



130 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

dent duties, duties, that is, which require no 
justification. 

And yet when we are led to reflect upon and 
analyze these duties, we may think differently. 
It is possible to question whether we are bound 
at all times, in all circumstances, to tell the 
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 
No one, I suppose, will hold that we may not 
in certain situations mislead a wild beast ; may 
we not also mislead a robber or, at any rate, a 
murderer — and even if not by word, then by a 
look, or a gesture, or by silence? Is not truth, 
in other words, subject to the law of benefit, 
is it not generally so obligatory because it is 
so necessary to mutual benefit? In those rare 
cases where it would work harm rather than 
good, may we not depart from truth? And can 
we not conceive of circumstances where truth- 



not be a first principle; in other words, a really first prin- 
ciple must be the object of an immediate judgment or per- 
ception. Intuitionism, in this sense, has nothing to do with 
the theory of innate ideas, or with supernaturalism; and, if 
it had. it would be as possible \o hold that we have an in- 
nate idea that man's happiness is what should be as to hold 
that we have an innate idea that virtue is that supreme end 
or that the realization of man's nature is. Supernatural- 
ism, too, is as capable of combination with utilitarianism or 
with sheer egoism (as it was actually in the case of Paley) as 
with the most contrasted views. Strictly speaking, then, 
ethical systems are not to be classed as intuitional and anti- 
intuitional — for all are at bottom based on a direct percep- 
tion or judgment — but according to wAat is supposed to be 
the object of the direct perception of judgment, viz.; happi- 
ness, virtue, life, progress, or what not. 



INTtJlTiONISM 131 

telling would be almost a crime? Sim- 

ilarly is not chastity a means to an end, rather 
than an end in itself? Is not the true end the 
maintenance and guardianship of the family- 
relation, which itself, indeed, is a means to the 
further end of the continuation of the race under 
the most favorable conditions? Cour- 

age, too, looks beyond itself; it is for an end 
— the gaining or conferring some benefit. Fear 
is better than courage in face of dangers that 
we cannot cope with — for thereby our lives or the 
lives of others may be saved, when otherwise 
they might be sacrificed. Prudence comes 

very near being a virtue in itself ; a wise regard 
for our own ends is certainly unconditionally 
and always a good as against simple indiffer- 
ence to them or miscalculation of the means to 
be taken to attain them ; and yet, when the ends 
of others are taken into account, it may some 
timee be a duty to let concern for ourselves 

go- 
In the same way love to others is uncondi- 
tionall}^ and always a duty, i. e., as against 
hatred or contempt toward them, or the dispo- 
sition to merely use them for one's own pur- 
poses ; and yet those who, in the exercise of 
love to others, should cease to care for them- 
selves at all, might be said to not only fail to 
do what was best in the long run for others, 



132 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

but to show a kind of injustice toward them- 
selves. For whatever fundamental reason exists 
for loving others, exists also for loving ourselves, 
we being of the same nature as others ; hence 
unselfishness may practically require sometimes 
to be corrected and balanced by self-love; it is 
possible even to conceive of circumstances in 
which others should be sacrificed rather than 
one's self. Just when the self should be preferred 
and when others, is a question of detail, a pro- 
blem of casuistry, that I need not deal with now. 
If there is any duty that would seem to be 
self-evident, it is justice. We may go against 
prudence (I mean, of course, rightfully go 
against it); so we may go against love; but we 
may never go against justice. There are no con- 
ceivable ends for which we may disregard it. 
It transcends the distinction between the love of 
self and the love of others, and exacts that we 
love others as we love ourselves. In accordance 
with it, too, we must love others equally — and not 
out of regard for one sacrifice others, as unreg- 
ulated altruism is so apt to do. We may speak 
of justice as a means to an end, namely, an ac- 
tually just order of things; but such an order 
can only be defined as what would be if the 
rule were obeyed. It must also be allowed that 
it may be no easy thing to determine what jus- 
tice actually requires in some of the complex 



INTUITIONISM 133 

situations o{ life; justice may often be a prob- 
lem — but the problem is not like the problem 
of casuistry to which I have just referred, since 
it is not a question of how far we shall follow 
justice and how far some other principle (par- 
allel thus to the question of how far in a given 
case we shall follow self-love and how far the 
love of others) ; the problem is rather what does 
the one principle (namely justice) actually de- 
mand, how in given circumstances shall wecome 
nearest to contributing to the one end of the 
common realization by all men, present and to 
come, of the capacities of their natures. Yes, 
justice in seeking the good of men would seem 
to be a self-evident duty, and thus the claim of 
Intuitionism would seem to be valid as regards 
at least one point. 

And yet a question arises. I have spoken of 
"justice in seeking the good of men." But is 
not this qualification, "in seeking the good of 
men," necessary? Is justice, in and of itself, 
of self-evident obligation? Justice in and of 
itself would seem to signify nothing more than 
impartiality, treating one person as we do an- 
other. But suppose that we treat all men alike 
ill, or that we are equally indifferent to all? 
We cannot then be taxed with injustice, but we 
can hardly be said to be exemplifying a duty. 
Suppose we give to every child of our acquaint- 



134 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

ance a stick of candy or distribute to every 
grown-up person we meet a bit of gossip, we 
certainly cannot be called partial or unjust, yet 
we may do harm rather than good. The ques- 
tion is then, does not justice (as an idea in and 
of itself) require to be supplemented by some 
notion of. what we are to aim at or justly seek, 
if it is to serve as an ethical rule? Justice in 
conferring a benefit is good ] justice in doing 
injury is bad. Moreover w^e may justly seek 
any of the ends already considered ; either life 
or perfection or progress or happiness or the 
realization of their natures we may seek alike 
for all. In other words, we cannot know whether 
we are doing well or ill in doing justice, we can 
not even know what justice practically means, 
until we decide what it is that we shall justly 
seek. But this is equivalent to saying that jus- 
tice in and of itself is not a self-evident duty 
or a duty at all. 

If justice is taken in the sense of giving to ev- 
ery one his dues, a similar conclusion seems to 
be not the less unavoidable. For the question 
cannot fail to arise. What are the dues or right- 
ful claims of men? One might hold that it would 
be defrauding at least his friends not to give 
them the last choice morsel of gossip that had 
come to his knowledge, or that candy was the 
rightful due at least of his own children. And, 



INTUITIONISM 135 

to speak seriously, what in the last resort is it 
that is man^s due? Is it happiness, or is it his legal 
rights, or long life, or the realization of his na- 
ture, or what is it? The mere notion of justice 
does not furnish so much as a clue to the right 
answer to these questions. In other words, it 
is necessary to look beyond justice, to discover 
what practical meaning we are to attach to it. 
And I think it will be found that wherever 
justice does make its peculiarly powerful appeal 
to our minds, it is conjoined with some notion 
of a good to be sought, or of a claim to be met, 
however vague the notion may be. 

Hence, Intuitionism (in the sense here used) 
breaks down. No virtue or rule of virtue is 
complete in itself ; none can even be defined or 
scientifically stated without reference to some- 
thing beyond it — so "self-evident" a virtue as 
justice implying (to the extent it is self-evi- 
dent) some worthy end to be sought alike for 
all, or some valid claim to be conceded.* 

The only way in which Intuitionism can save 
itself would be by taking virtue in a deeper and 
broader sense, namely, as that fundamental act 
or choice, by which we aim at what reason pro- 
nounces desirable — all the "virtues" being re- 

*Compare a saying quoted from Chrysippijs in Plutarch' s 
Morals, Vol. IV., p. 443, Goodwin's ed. : '^Neither any of 
the virtues is eligible nor any of the vices to be avoided for 
itself, but all these things are to be referred to the promised 
scope." 



135 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

garded as outgrowths, or exemplifications, of 
this act or choice. But in this case Intuition- 
ism would be indistinguishable from other eth- 
ical theories already considered, and from that 
one to which we shall now turn our attention 
— Utilitarianism. 



CHAPTER V 

UTILITARIANISM 

Utilitarianism is based upon the view (to 
borrow John Stuart Mill's language) that "hap- 
piness is desirable and the only thing desirable 
as an end. "* By happiness is meant not merely 
the happiness of the person acting or choosing, 
but the happiness of all men. The theory 
could, indeed, be extended as easily as the view 
I have advocated, to cover the lower orders of 
creation, so far as sentient beings are among 
them, though we could not, of course, according 
to its terms, be said to have duties toward trees 
or plants. I do not think it necessary to consid- 
er at the present time that view which is some- 

*If the term, Utilitarianism, were taken literally and 
apart from its historical connotations, I should have no dif- 
ficulty in accepting it as a partial designation of the view I 
hold, I entirely subscribe to Plato's language, {Republic, 
Book v., 457B), "that is and ever will be the best of say- 
ings that the useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base;'' 
but the question remains, useful to what end? Plato's 
statement is consistent with a variety of ends. But the 
characteristic doctrine of Utilitarianism, in the historical 
sense of the term, is that pleasure or happiness is the end. 

137 



138 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

times confounded with Utilitarianism — the 
view that one's own happiness is the ultimate 
end; this view is Egoistic Hedonism, while 
Utilitarianism is Universalistic Hedonism.* 
From a rational standpoint it seems to me that 
if happiness is the thing that is desirable, the 
happiness of another is as desirable as my own ; 
or if I start with m}^ own happiness and am yet 
willing to think or reason at all, I can easily 
see that another's happiness is a good for the 
same reason that my own is. One may hold 
that one's own happiness is desirable and that 
ideally it is on a par as a worthy object of 
regard with the happiness of others ; but this 
view is consistent with Utilitarianism — while 
Egoistic Hedonism seems asomething unnatural 
since it says, so far as it is a distinct theory at 
all, that one's own happiness is the only thing 
supremely worth regarding. f 

As to the contention that happiness is desira- 
ble, I see no reason whatever to dispute it. 
That a being who can experience pleasure is 
more richly endowed than one who cannot and 
that the realization of this capacity is a good, 

* I borrow this terminology from that mine of scrupulous 
thinking and careful statement, Sidgwick's The Method of 
Ethics. 

\ A similar distinction is conceivable with reference to 
any other concrete end, like that of the realization of man's 
nature, or that of perfection, of progress or of virtue; I mean 
that each might be taken egoistically or universalistically. 



UTILITARIANISM 1 39 

no one can question. The matter of debate is 
whether it is the only thing desirable as an end. 
For this is the Utilitarian affirmation — that hap- 
piness alone is what unconditionally should be 
and that every other activity or attainment is 
only valuable as it contributes to happiness. 
But why should happiness be alone desirable? It 
is the realization of one part, one positive capa- 
city, of our nature ; but why should not the reali- 
zation of other parts, of our capacity for knowl- 
edge, of our capacity for moral action, of our ca- 
pacity for aesthetic appreciation or achievement, 
be also desirable? It is true that we may care 
more for happiness than for science, for right ac- 
tion, or for art— but the question now is, what 
should vfQC3.re for? and my contention is, not that 
happiness is unworthy or that it should be treated 
as of no account, but that it is simply one among 
other desirable ends. No one will deny that 
knowledge is in idea distinct from happiness — 
one may have knowledge without happiness, as 
one may have happiness without knowledge; so 
is the appreciation or creation of the beautiful ; 
so is moral conduct. It is even possible to 
conceive of beingswho should know, who should 
have aesthetic perceptions and judgments, and 
who should act, yet all without enjoyment — not 
as being unhappy, but as being without capacity 
for pleasure or pain. Such beings would not, it 



140 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

appears to me, rank so high in the scale of being 
as those that we actually know with their keen 
and manifold susceptibilities to pleasurable 
sensation j and yet they would rank higher than 
mere unconscious existence, and the realization 
of their nature would be a good. Would any one 
say of such beings that it was indifferent whether 
they attained knowledge or not, whether they 
developed their perceptions of the beautiful or 
not, whether they acted rightly (i, e,, rationally) 
or not, simply because they experienced no 
pleasure in doing so and conferred no pleasure 
on one another? It seems to me that this would 
be to give to pleasure a place that we have no 
warrant in reason for giving it; which is equiv- 
alent to saying that the fundamental position 
of Utilitarianism is, in a measure, arbitrary or 
wilful. For it must be remembered that the 
characteristic feature of Utilitarianism is the 
assertion that happiness is the only thing ulti- 
mately desirable, knowledge and art and right 
conduct being desirable only in so far as they 
contribute to happiness, that is, result in pleas- 
urable sensation. 

The Utilitarian might, indeed, ask, In case 
knowledge contributed to unhappiness rather 
than happiness, in case the perception of the 
beautiful made us miserable, and action of what- 
ever sort involved us in more pain than pleasure, 



UTILITARIANISM I4I 

should we still say that knowledge and the ex- 
ercise of our other faculties were good? My 
answer would be threefold: In the first place, 
the supposition is a very extreme one and would 
appear to be possible only on the basis of a 
pessimistic view of the universe. To match 
it for extravagance one would have to ask on 
the other side, Suppose that happiness were 
only possible by deceiving ourselves and living 
in a realm of cloudland and superstition, by ha- 
bituating ourselves to and coming to love what 
is ugly and vile, by living an idle and pur- 
poseless existence, though we had the capacit}^ 
for great achievement, would such happiness 
be worth having? But, accepting the supposi- 
tion, extreme as it is, I should remark, in the 
second place, that under such circumstances the 
development of our capacities might still be a 
good (in itself), though not a good in relation 
to happiness ; and the question would thence 
arise, would existence on these terms be de- 
sirable, what was good under one aspect being 
bad under another? Even if existence (^on such 
terms) were pronounced desirable, it might not 
be supportable, sentient beings not being able 
to stand more than a certain amount of pain ; 
and what on account of our matter-of-fact con- 
stitution we can not endure, we are under no 
obligation to try to endure; that is, the de- 



142 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

sirable in this case would not be the ethically 
desirable, i.e.;, a basis for duty. And this leads 
me to say, in the third place, that the desirable 
itself, according to the view here advanced, is 
the realization not of any one capacity, (or set 
of capacities) but of all the capacities of our 
nature, and thus presupposes the possibility of 
a certain totality of development, i. e.,of a reali- 
zation of any one capacity thatis consistentwith 
the realization of the rest. If this can not be 
(at least approximately), if in the nature of the 
case one part of our nature can only be devel- 
oped by leaving other parts undeveloped or in- 
juring or destroying them, then the theory I have 
advanced of the desirable does, indeed, break 
down ; but it need not on that account be mis- 
understood; and it does not carry with it the 
duty of living a life of unmixed pain, or of devel- 
oping our intellectual or aesthetic or practical 
capacities to a point inconsistent with some 
degree of happiness. It only means that in- 
tellectual and other development is not to be 
estimated me7'ely by its tendency to make us (or 
others) happy, that knowledge is good as a re- 
alization of one of our capacities and art is good 
as the realization of another, just as happiness 
is itself a good (irrespective of its relation to 
anything else); not, however, that any of these 



UTILITARIANISM I43 

goods is a total good or the only good, so that 
it and it alone is worthy to be desired. 

Utilitarianism contains thus an element of 
arbitrariness qr irrationality. But more than 
this it is questionable whether its standard ^is 
a sufficient one, i. e., whether happiness is in 
itself capable of determining duty in any com- 
pleteness. It does seem to be implied in the 
Utilitarian view that the happiness of all men 
alike shall be sought, i. e., that justice shall 
be practiced. For if happiness is the end, then 
wherever a being capable of happiness appears, 
such an one should be regarded ; and equal 
treatment of all is the essential meaning of jus- 
tice.* So love would be called for ; also veracity 
and chastity and courage, since it can hardly be 
doubted that these are conducive to happiness, 
happiness being taken in the universal sense. 
The development of intelligence makes possible 
a greater amount of happiness and hence be- 
comes a good — so also the culture of the aesthetic 
nature. To a certain extent, then, happiness 
does determine duty. But there are two ways 
in which its insufficiency as a standard becomes 
tolerably evident. 

* If justice is taken in the other sense, above mentioned, 
of giving to different beings their respective dues, such jus- 
tice would be none the less called for by the Utilitarian rule. 
Its practical meaning would be, Give to each one the happi- 
ness he is capable of. 



144 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

In the first place, happiness being the end, 
the happiness of every one must be sought, and, 
since animals are capable of happiness, the 
happiness of animals as well. How then do we 
distinguish between what we owe to animals 
and what we owe to men? Do they stand on 
the same level and must we join the Buddhists 
in treating animal life as equally sacred with 
human life? It maybe said that human beings 
are capable of more happiness, and therefore 
their happiness should be preferred ; but justice 
would seem to dictate that each being should 
have that happiness which it is capable of — and 
if it can have less, that its rights sh6uld, if any- 
thing, be more sacredly respected. If it is said, 
however, that human beings are capable of 
higher kinds of happiness, the question arises 
whether it is possible for us to form the notion 
of higher and lower kinds, without resorting 
to some principle beyond happiness? One kind 
of happiness is as truly happiness as another ; 
the difference is not in the pleasurable sensa- 
tion, /<?r se, but in what is associated with it or, 
more strictly speaking, in the sources from 
which it springs. Intellectual pleasures are, 
indeed, different from the pleasures attending 
the gratification of the senses, but they are dif- 
ferent not in respect to their specific quality as 
pleasures, but in their origin and in the rank 



UTILITARIANISM I45 

assigned them by the mind. Yet if we have 
to go outside of happiness, to determine what 
are higher and lower kinds of happiness, the 
Utilitarian theory is plainly incomplete. It 
may, of course, be held that it is as wrong to 
take animal life as it is to take human life; but 
not only does the average moral consciousness 
refuse to allow this, but, as we have before 
seen, there is rational ground for a contrary 
opinion. 

Secondly, in the circle of human beings them- 
selves, we are presented with a similar difficul- 
ty. For if the supreme duty is to make all men 
happy, we must make them happy in the way 
in which they wish to be happy — since naught 
else is happiness to them. To make a man 
happy in ways he does not care for, comes near 
to being self-contradictory. The variableness 
of happiness for different individuals is well 
known. Nor need this in itself occasion per- 
plexity. We may say that men shouldhe made 
happy in as many ways as they wish to be, 
provided these ways are innocent and not dis- 
honorable. But it can not be denied that some 
men find happiness in ways that are debasing 
or unworthy. Ways that preclude the possibility 
of future happiness would, indeed, be con- 
demned by the Utilitarian standard itself (for 

Utilitarianism signifies seeking the greatestpos- 
10 



146 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

sible amount of happiness). But supposing 
that a person could be happ)^ till the end of his 
life in ignorance or superstition, in the self- 
fish pursuit of wealth or the ostentatious use 
of it, in the indulgence of some vicious or crim- 
inal instinct, there would seem to be not only 
no obligation to interfere with such happiness, 
but a positive obligation to further it to the 
extent of our power. Unfortunately, society 
presents us too many instances of those who 
find their happiness in living mean, self-indul- 
gent or, at best, idle lives. So far as this does 
not cut short their days, should we not co-op- 
erate with them, while at the same time we be- 
stow equal regard on those whose tastes and 
desires are, as we are in the habit of saying, 
of a more "elevated" sort — making each class 
happy in its own chosen way? So far as justice 
is concerned, would not this impartial regard for 
the varying tastes and desires of all become its 
practical meaning, and would not love (aiming 
only at happiness) act only more zealously, 
though, perhaps not always with the same im- 
partiality,inthe sameway? Tolove a person and 
yet deny him his wishes is felt to be almost self- 
contradictory. Soberly speaking, however, it is 
impossible to allow that it is our duty to make 
people happy irrespective of whether such hap- 
piness is of a worthy or unworthy sort. 



UTILITARIANISM I47 

It may, indeed, be said that since Utilitarian- 
ism enjoins furthering the happiness of all, we 
have in this requirement of a happiness for each 
consistent with the happiness of the rest a lim- 
itation upon the kind of happiness we are to 
further. And this would prevent our furthering 
the happiness of those who find happiness in 
conduct that makes others unhappy ; but all 
other happiness would still have its claims upon 
us, however ignoble — happiness in supersti- 
tion, happiness in obeying stupid prejudices, 
happiness in conceit and vanity, happiness in 
depraved tastes, in idleness, and even in vice 
and meanness, so far as these do not make others 
unhappy (however disregardful of their rights). 
In brief, it is not a duty to further every body's 
happiness irrespective of what the character of 
that happiness is; and yet Utilitarianism gives 
us an imperfect criterion of what constitutes 
a worthy sort of happiness. 

It is true that if all those whose happiness we 
are to seek, obeyed in turn the Utilitarian rule 
themselves, our difficulties would be lessened, 
if not wholly obviated; but the rule counsels 
us to seek the happiness of the actually existing 
men about us, not of ideal beings — and it would 
be almost absurd (or, at least, it would be a 
totally new rule) to say that the rule is to re- 
gard only those who obey the rule. 



148 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

On the other hand, if the realization of the 
total capacities of our nature is the end (in 
the case of others as truly as in that of our- 
selves), then that happiness is worthy which 
is consistent with such a realization, and super- 
stition, prejudice, conceit and vanity, as being 
inconsistent with knowledge and a due intellec- 
tual development, depraved tastes as inconsis- 
tent with the cultivation of the aesthetic nature, 
idleness as incongruous with the development 
of our active powers, not to speak of any vice 
or meanness, would all be marked as unworthy ; 
in other words the end which I have proposed 
supplies a criterion which the Utilitarian end 
does not. 



CHAPTER VI 

CONCLUDING REMARKS 

The outcome of the preceding chapter is 
that Utilitarianism is incomplete as truly as 
Intuitionism was previously shown to be, though 
in a different way. Both require supplement- 
ing by recourse to other principles than those 
which characteristically belong to them. That 
is, each fails as a self-consistent theory in itself. 

And yet each contains elements of truth ; and 
not the least merit of the theory advanced in 
chapter III is that it is able to, and does ex- 
pressly, include these elements. 

Happiness is an end of our being. I mean it 
is an ultimate end. We do not have to say 
why happiness is desirable or why the desire 
for it is right; it is 4esirable in itself — it is 
something that contains within itself its reason 
for being. The capacity for pleasurable emo- 
tion raises us in the scale of being above all 
insentient existence. When we attain to un- 
mixed pleasure, we have (to use metaphysical 

149 



150 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

language) reached one of the ends for which 
God made us, though this we might also say 
of any joyously-singing bird or bounding animal. 
We do not have to ask what is the use of plea- 
sure; the glory or the sweetness of the moment is 
enough. Of course, this is said of pleasure 
in itself, of pleasure as pleasure — not of pleas- 
ure when vitiated by coming from an unworthy 
source. This is the truth of Utilitarianism — it 
is right to aim at happiness, the happiness of 
ourselves as truly as the happiness of others 
(within the limits already described) ; it is 
wrong to be indifferent to happiness, to be mo- 
rose and sullen, as Dante well knew, who as- 
signed a fitting punishment to those who chose 
to be gloomy where they should enjoy,* The 
error of Utilitarianism is not in making much, 
but in making everything of this truth, in ig- 
noring other capacities of our nature which rank 
as high if not higher, and are ,no more means 
to an end than is the capacity for happiness. 

I wish now to point out the truth in Intui- 
tionism. I have shown that virtue can not be 
defined save by going beyond itself (or any 
rule of virtue); virtue is a state of the will, but 
it is the will directed (either immediately or 
by implication) to certain concrete ends. And 
yet from another point of view, this very direc- 

* Inferno, Canto vii. 




CONCLUDING REMARKS 151 

tion of the will is itself a good. For the possibil- 
ity of such a direction of the will is one of the 
positive capacities of our , nature 3 quite apart 
from any contribution to happiness which it 
may make, a virtuous will has intrinsic worth. 
We may perhaps see this clearly, if we picture to 
ourselves on the one hand a company of beings 
made perfectly happy without any will or exer- 
tions of their own( whether in their own or in one 
another's behalf) and, on the other hand, beings 
who make themselves happy, who make one 
another happy, whose active powers are well- 
developed and whose wills are strong for mu- 
tual good. Surely in dignity of being the lat- 
ter company rise higher than the former — 
though the happiness of both were exactly equal; 
indeed, should we not say that it was better to 
have incomplete happiness along with a strong 
direction of the will towards good, than to have 
perfect happiness without this? In other words, 
virtue is a good irrespective of anything it leads 
to, irrespective of its uses. We cannot ration- 
ally ask, what it is for (though we may ask, what 
does it aim at or how is it to be defined)? any 
more than we can ask what pleasure is for. It. 
contains within itself its reason for being,simply 
as the realization of one of the capacities of 
our being — and of one of the crowning capaci- 
ties (as being so closely related to reason, which 



152 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

may be called the regal principle, as before 
explained). 

Utilitarianism exalts a state of feeling into 
the place of what is ultimately desirable; Intui- 
tionism gives the same place to a state of will. 
Intuitionism is, practically speaking, to this 
extent nearer right ; but both are wrong in that 
they take account only of parts of our nature, 
the realization of whose total capacities is alone 
absolutely good. Our rational and aesthetic 
capacities are to be taken into account along 
with our capacities for pleasure and for virtue. 
Art is good not for any utilitarian reason merely, 
nor merely for any (in the narrow sense) ethical 
reason, i. e., because it may help to virtue; 
it is good simply as the creation of the beau- 
tiful, good because it satisfies and springs from 
certain independent capacities of our nature. 
So is science good, so is philosophy — not for 
any uses beyond themselves, not even to enable 
us to live better lives — but because science 
and philosophy are the product of a pre-eminent- 
ly noble part of our being.* Even ethics itself 
may be studied philosophically, I mean not for 
practical guidance and help, but with the aim of 
bringing into order and system our often inco- 
herent notions of the good and so satisfying 

*Van Buren Denslow finely vindicates the independent 
character and worth of intellectual curiosity, as of the love 
of beauty, in his Modern Thinkers, pp. 250, 251. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 153 

the purely rational instincts and cravings within 
us. To Aristotle, contemplation, theoretic vis- 
ion, was the supreme goodjf and whether it 
is so or not, it is surely a part and an independ- 
ent part of the total good — and science for 
itself has as much claim to be, as art of itself, 
or "virtue" for itself, or happiness for itself, 
although in truth all have the right to be sim- 
ply as parts of the total achievement of the 
spirit of man, as the consummation of the total 
Divine end of his being. And true virtue, vir- 
tue not in the conventional but in the ideal 
sense — that the account of which is ethics pro- 
per — is not any single and special finite act or 
habit, but the voluntary dedication of ourselves 
to the total idea of our being, or, to use theistic 
language, the willing co-operation of man with 
God. Hence science, art, "virtue" (in the lim- 
ited sense), happiness are parts of the ethical 
ideal ; they are all things that should be ; they 
alike give a basis for duty. 

It is only an ethical theory of such a scope 
that I find satisfactory ; that is, that seems 
anywise complete, self-sufficient,self-consistent. 
What name I shall give it I do not know. I 
am not even well enough acquainted with the 
history of ethical speculation to know what 
particular writers, if any, have sanctioned it in 

f See Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, chap. vii. 



154 FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY 

the past. It has points of contact with the view 
advanced by the late T. H. Green in his Prole- 
gomena to Ethics, though I had developed all its 
main features before reading that book. I have 
learned much from Aristotle, from Butler, from 
Kant, from Sidgwick, but I cannot sa^^ that any 
of them taught me just the theory I have ad- 
vanced or gave me help in meeting its peculiar 
difficulties, as I have tried to face them in 
chapter III. Yet it is after all a view which 
finds frequent popular expression in these days — 
for who has not heard that it is our duty to 
develop harmoniously all our faculties? It 
might be said that all I have done is to attempt 
to state this truism scientifically. 

Though I have stated the theory abstractly, 
it is one which, if practically accepted and fol- 
lowed to its consequences, would produce many 
changes in the world — changes which the spirit 
of the time is already beginning to make. That 
all men should develop the capacities of their 
nature is really a revolutionary proposition. 
Utilitarianism has been a practically reforming 
force ; the view I advocate would go in the same 
direction, only further, since it asks for men not 
only that they may be made happy, but that all 
the higher capacities of their nature may be 
unfolded as well. It is not comfort alone, it is 
a perfected humanity that is to be made pos- 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 155 

sible. The demand is that wherever a man is, 
there the ends of man shall be accomplished — 
whether he be in factory or mine or shop or 
field and even if his outward semblance almost 
belies the claim that he is a man. But this is 
not the place for practical deductions from the 
theory; I will not even say that it is the true 
theory ; I can only say that it is true to me,(with 
the best exercise of rationality that I have been 
able to command); whether it is true to others 
who have taken the trouble to follow the wind- 
ings of my thought, they must themselves de- 
cide. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 

(gUOTED OR REFERRED TO) 





PAGB^ 


Aristotle, 


37 n., 51 n., 153, 154 


Balfour, A. J., 


74 n. 


Berkeley, 


.62 


Biichner, 


25 n 


Butler, 


154 


Carlyle, 


. 41 n 


Charming, . 


107 n 


Chrysippus, 


. . . 135 n 


Clifford, W. K., 


32n., 33n 


Cohn, Gustav, 


83 n 


Dante, 


150 


Democritus, 


23 n 


Denslow, Van Buren, 


152 n 


Emerson, 


40 n, 79 


Fisher, George P., 


41 n 


von Gizycki, Georg, 


24 n 


Goethe, 


39 


Green, T. H., 


152 


Helmholtz, 


II n 


Homer, 


18 n 


Huxley, lo, 20 n., 23 


n., 24 n., 26 n., 410., 43 n., 48, 64 n 


Isaiah, 


lion 


James, William, 


20 n., 67 n 


Kant, 


27 n, 84. 154 


Keynes, J. N., 


77 n 


Lange, F. A. 


23 n 


Mill. J. S., 


• 97. 137 


Newman, J. H,, 


. ign., 118 n 


Paley, 


130 n 


Pentecost, H. O., 


89 n 


Plato, 


137 n 


Shakespeare, 


16, ig n., 4on., 45 


Sidgwick, Henry, . 


79n., 138 n., 154 


Spencer, Herbert, 


19 n., 20 n., 27 n., 64 


Thomson, Sir W., 


24 n 


Wagner, Adolph, 


83 n 


Wordsworth, 


18 


Wright, Chauncey, 


58 n 



156 



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